Yet another Top Ten, 2025 in live silent cinema...

Have you noticed that there are more and more best-of lists this year? Most are aimed at generating engagement either with heated debates on the socials or via ecommerce, but some are just the outpourings of unquiet minds, butterflies who just need to bring some order at this disturbing time of the year between normal service and Christmas’ mourning. This is one of those, it punctuates the space between regular rants about live screenings and hot digital media – or lukewarm in the case of the last post. So, here we go after the year in which I published the THOUSANDTH post on this blog and crossed the one MILLION words mark… I’ll try be brief.

Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney

January was the hottest month as a cool breeze blew in from Sweden as the BFI screened the SFI’s restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s adaptation of Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloff’s novel. I was honoured to introduce the film and to interview Sonja Kristina, the granddaughter of Gerda Lundequist (who played the matriarch of Ekeby), who then attended the event with her children and grandchildren.

The film is long and may have its faults but it is a major work and features Lars Hanson, the young Greta Gustafson and my favourite Silent Film Principal Dancer/Actor, Jenny Hasselqvist. The restoration looked stunning bringing new vibrancy and order to the film and, cometh the three hours cometh the accompanist - John Sweeney topped things off with energy and invention, as ever the perfect player for the long dance!

Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird's collection

Museums of Dreamworlds… Kennington Bioscope Programme of Antiquities

This was a collaboration between the Bioscope, the BFI and the Department of Greek and Latin, at my daughter’s alma mater, University College London as part of Museums of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity in the BFI National Archive. Introduced by the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, and presented by Professor Maria Wyke from UCL it was a selection of films from 1901 to 1927 all of which drew their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome – very loosely in some cases!

Most of the films were from the BFI’s archive with one - Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird’s collection on 28mm digitally scanned by the Cinema Museum. The project asks “…how did silent cinema design its Greek and Roman dreamworlds? What did cinema gain from recreating the distant past? What did the past gain from being recreated in moving images?” On the night, we found some answers and some more questions and we also discovered how Helen’s fabulous face and fancy for the tailors of Troy led to the war between Sparta and Troy: even now we know these stories so well we can understand these jokes.

A 1919 Erdmann with colour filters!

 

Early Colour Live!, Birkbeck University with John Sweeney, Christopher Bird and Iain Christie

Another collaboration and a set of early colour films on celluloid from Chris Bird’s collection and hand-cranked by the man himself on his own projector. We saw hand-coloured film that would have required sixteen images hand colouring for every foot of film equating to one second, Pathé’s pioneering stencil colour system, William Friese Greene’s Biocolour and more all revealing the sophistication and relentless innovation of cinema’s first decades.

Such treats do not come around very often and here’s hoping for more from the gang in 2026.

 

Inka Länta

With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (1926), Hippfest at Home, Hippfest #15

 

I wasn’t able to get to Falkirk this year but luckily was able to enjoy the online edition. As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well.

Pick of the pics was this dramatized documentary about the reindeer herding lives of the Sámi people who co-existed with them in the most precarious of ways in the far north of Sweden, across Scandinavia and even into Russia. The screening encompassed Sámi old and new with the UK premiere of a new score by Sámi-Finnish joiker and electronic musician Hildá Länsman plus sound designer Tuomas Norvio, collaborating with the Norwegian Sámi musician Lávre Johan Eira and Swedish composer, cellist and bass guitarist Svante Henryson. Traditional forms of Sámi song – “joik” - were deployed alongside moder instruments and electronica to create a visceral and sometimes startling score to this restored documentation of this remarkable people.

Hotel booked; I look forward to the 16^th Edition in March!

Betty Balfour

The Sea Urchin (UK 1926), with Colin Sell, 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend

April and it was time for an early breakfast and the finest coffee that Lambeth can provide as we dove into this mini-Giornate del cinema muto in Charlie’s old workhouse home. Highlights came thick and fast and included the World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle Facey. There were British films, Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch playing, introduced by Lawrence Napper and with Ivy Duke and Guy Newall on screen, along with rare US prints, Clive Brook in The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine and introduction by Liz Cleary

My favourite was The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper which included Britain’s Queen of Happiness, Betty Balfour (more of whom is coming in ’26 with a recently rediscovered film… check out the KB website!). It was a proper delight with The Sea Urchin in question being our BB’s Fay Wynchbeck who as the film starts is a disruptive student in a Parisian girls’ boarding school. Her singing and dancing leads the other girls slightly astray and there’s a fabulous shot of their after-hours partying through the keyhole which Alfred H would have been lauded for. Fay has rich relatives but there’s a family feud in her way… I swear Colin Sell laughed at parts as he played along with glee!!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate, live 78 RPM DJ Chris Bird, BFI

June was a mixed blessing as I couldn’t make it to Cinema Ritrovato but at least I had the BFI’s Film on Film long weekend to provide the look and feel of nitrate and celluloid! This was a wonderful weekend with lots of colourful treats and my chance to stay awake (see original post in October, 2017) for all of Lubitsch’s wonderful The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), but my favourite live cinematic experience had to be the surreal presentation of Bunel’s masterpiece in NFT1.

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [Luis and Salvador...]

Luis Buñuel’s original score was a “mash up” – as The Kids now say – of Argentinian Tango music with Wagner et al, thereby inventing Classical Lounge Core without knowing it. Chris Bird, who collects shellac as well as celluloid, was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range. It was the hip-hop triumph of the season and exactly the kind of madness the creators wanted!

 

Anna May Wong in The Thief of Bagdad

 The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand, BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

The BFI’s Anna May Wong season was my favourite of the year and included one great day in which I caught up with her in two of the great silent fantasy films which I had been waiting to see on film and on screen. Peter Pan (1924) caught the eye with JM Barrie’s hand-picked pocket rocket betty Bronson and its closeness to the original play as well as accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos but The Thief of Bagdad (1924) featuring a dazzling Douglas Fairbanks and epic accompaniment from Neil Brand featured more AMW and was on such a scale it have NFT1 buzzing!! I could happily watch both films every day of the week!

Italia Almirante Manzini abides

Zingari (IT 1920), with Günter Buchwald, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

This was the pure diva pomp and circumstance of Italia Almirante Manzini playing the Queen of the Gypsies in Zingari (IT 1920) and it brought the Teatro Verdi to its feet with a combination of on-screen energy and the startling accompaniment from a super group comprised of Baldry, Buchwald and Bockius or BBB for short. The film tells the story of Vielka, daughter of the Gyspy King Jammadar (Alfonso Cassini) who is fierce and unruly, determined to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Sindel (Amleto Novelli) even though he is from a rival clan and physically puts the old man in his place when challenged, starting the feud that runs the entire narrative.

Vielka is supposed to marry Gudlo (Franz Sala), who’s not a patch on Sindel so no wonder she burns their farmhouse and gets herself exiled. Will there be any happy ending, do operas ever have happy endings? Günter let loose his inner gypsy on violin and the others followed on with one of the most passionate accompaniments of this year’s Giornate!

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent.. Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme films and this film is another great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in the greater context.  It didn’t feel triumphant though, more grimly determined to help complete the job and this was partly down to the excellence of Laura Rossi’s musical choices.

Laura has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone & Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Her score enabled us to really see the film, devoid of any post-facto contextualisation, in ways that were connected to the original intent. She allowed us a bit of both but underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a most historical musical agenda, incredibly effective and created.

 

Lillian Gish

Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film

Another film that anyone professing to blog about silent film should surely have seen already but as with the two above, I’ve been waiting to see it “live” on film and with an ace accompanist. I was not disappointed and am persuaded that Lillian Gish probably influenced Griffiths’ development of the story. Working not only with the best actor he also had one of the best cameramen and had clearly been watching the works of Sjostrom and Weber as this story is uncompromising. It’s also a surprise to see the film take the approach it does to Gish’s unmarried mother character and, indeed, to see her fight back against the guilty party: This man – an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been?

This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the man she actually loves – played by Richard Barthelmess.

Stephen Horne provided yet another one-man orchestral score off the hoof and covered this film’s vast space and time with constantly evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments with just the two hands, or so he says!

 

The UK forecast...

Thank you to all who have programmed, played, introduced and archived this year, lets do even more in 2026 as I write my way towards my second million words…

 

 

 

Never lands... Peter Pan (1924)/The Thief of Bagdad (1924), BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

 

Two blockbusters on a scale that influenced the next century of film right up to the mighty world of extended universes and modern franchises most specifically in the impact the former had on a certain Walter Disney but also in the incredible scale of the latter. Surely impressive appearances in both would help establish Anna May Wong as a rising star in Hollywood but in spite of her extraordinary ability to shine through and energise even the most confined role, it was not to be although she worked as hard as anyone could to maintain her own momentum and if it wasn’t going to be at home it would have to be away or even, far, far away. Still, she was noticed in Europe, especially in Britain and Germany, second star on the right, straight on till morning…

 

In the USA both films were amongst the most successful in 1924 with Thief bringing in $1.5million in 4^th place and the Christmas released Pan, eventually getting more than $600k. They were two of the six films Anna made in 1924 and the following year she made just two with four in 1926 and then a mixed bag of eight in 1927. Her last Hollywood film of 1928 was the Joan Crawford vehicle, Across to Singapore and she was uncredited but, for her first Anglo-German film she got star billing for Song (1928) and of course Piccadilly and Pavement Butterfly in 1929.

 

But these two films were spectacular and high impact proving her abilities in top-level company especially the phenomenon Fairbanks – so kinetic he makes Tom Cruise look like late period Ralph Richardson – and the mighty Betty Bronson who if ever there was a female equivalent to Doug, demonstrates it in Neverland. This was an afternoon of the highest quality with two major silent works that I had been saving up for the big screen with splendid accompaniment and a passionate informed audience. One of those special BFI days.

 

Mary Brian sews on Betty Bronson's shadow: this may hurt!

Peter Pan (1924,) with Costas Fotopoulos

 

Betty Bronson was a pocket rocket and was selected by JM Barrie over 100 others tested for the role¹ and we can absolutely see why. She made quite the impression on Fairbanks’ son Doug Jnr as he had later admitted she was his first crush on watching her in Peter Pan; she was 17 when she made the film and he was 15 when it was released and they were friends afterwards, the actor recalling in his autobiography that It was not fully requited. She only flirted with me…. No worries champ, you’ll be married to Joan Crawford within five years!

 

Betty is certainly full of Fairbanks’ zip in every single scene of this film, radiating health and laddish enthusiasm as the boy who never grows up. JM Barrie’s seminal Edwardian fantasy began as a play in 1904 before being novelised as Peter and Wendy in 1911. The first performance was at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 27 December 1904 with Nina Boucicault in the title role and so Peter was always played by a woman on stage which is noteworthy in itself in terms of the British drag tradition and the “trouser role”.

Anna May Wong brings the noise

 

The story and the film despite their fantastical nature are about parenthood and also loss with Peter possibly being inspired by the death of David the 14-year-old son of Barrie’s friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a “Lost boy” who would never grow old and yet was happy to stay in Never Never Land. The character first appeared in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird, written for adults. The author ended up adopting Sylvia’s children after she and her husband died and this too is reflected in the story with Mrs Darling taking in the Lost Boys.

 

The film is a pure delight and a celebration of childhood with opening title cards explaining that viewers need to connect with their childish selves – no problem personally – in order to understand the photo play. It was lovely to see a number of children in the audience too, some very responsible parenting in evidence! The film has more of the intentions of the play along with a portion of the dialogue and is quite different to Disney’s 1953 cartoon which smooths out the sense of loss and the overt celebration of motherhood as well as the romantic frisson between Wendy and Peter. Disney, as ever, uncomfortable with reality.

 

Esther Ralston is key to setting the tone as Mrs. Darling, a woman of compassion and unconditional nurturing love. It is she who first encounters Peter in the children’s nursery and accidentally cuts off his shadow closing the window on him. She puts it in a draw and sees Peter again as he tries to retrieve what is perhaps a metaphor for his memory, soul and/or his loving existence on Earth… he recognises her but he can’t remember why, an extension of the same amnesia the younger Darlings experience after time in Never Land. Philippe De Lacy is boorish Dad Michael Darling who pranks his children and won’t keep his end of the bargain in taking his medicine instead feeding it to Nana the Dog, an extraordinary creation played by George Ali a puppeteer and animal impersonator who was incredibly flexible for a 58-year-old. He also plays lion and a crocodile… animal magic!

 

Mother Esther Ralston

Nana may only be a dog but is the children’s nursemaid making sure they get to bed on time and take their bath. Grumpy Dad chains her to the garden kennel meaning she is not on hand to protect the children when Peter and Tinkerbell arrive and, after Wendy (Mary Brian) sews Pan’s shadow back onto his feet, whisk them into the air and off to the island of Never Never Land. Wendy’s brothers John are played by Jack Murphy and Michael by Philippe De Lacy who went onto play the young prince in Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, before becoming a producer and director once he grew up!

 

They land in the Forest of Make-Believe and the fun really begins with mermaids, pirates and native Americans – not for nothing did this film come with a warning about the screening containing “racist attitudes, language and images, including red face”, it’s a document of its time. Here we find Anna May Wong as Tiger Lily, one of a group of “red Indians” who inhabit the forest, she’s not in many scenes but obviously brings the required pep to everyone although her band are unable to defeat the evil pirates led by the infamous Captain Hook! Ernest Torrence leaves no parts of the scenery unchewed and is spectacularly nasty as the pirate with the heart of lead… he’s the archetypical villain from Lex Luthor to Dr Doom up against a boy that can fly and knows no fear.

 

Peter and the Pirates... Ernest Torrence is terrfic.

We watched a 35mm copy from George Eastman House which ran at just over two hours with Costas Fotopoulos, seeing the film for the first time as well, filling his accompaniment with playful inventions suitable for an audience Barrie implored to go back to the nursery and once more believe in fairies as the play moved on.

 

Today was the 55^th anniversary of NFT2 and what better celebration than an audience clapping along as Betty Bronson urged us to signal out belief in magic and save poor Tinkerbell. Wonderful!

 

Doug on a magic carpet over a cast of thousands, still not sure how this was done?

The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand

 

Follow that and the BFI did with the shock and awe of Douglas Fairbank’s and Raoul Walsh’s epic adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights which was based on a story written by the actor under the pseudonym of Elton Thomas according to Kevin Brownlow and David Gill whose Photoplay restoration we watched. It is perhaps the ultimate Doug surpassing even Robin Hood (1922) and we had fabulous accompaniment from Neil Brand whose orchestral score for the former film demonstrated such an uncanny connection with the star and screen. Here, Neil was The Orchestra and for 164 minutes, albeit with a very short intermission, bringing his singular style and understanding of motion picture composition to the fore as the picture and the action towered over the rapt audience sat in NFT1.

 

The film’s sets were bigger than Hood’s and even Intolerance and were the work of William Cameron Menzies and they were so spectacular that Fairbanks fitted the action around them: there’s no elaborate staircase Doug can’t ascend with bounding flamboyance, no wall he can’t climb or descend or window he can’t slide down. He is his own special effect and, with his 21^st Century physique on topless display he is the epitome of health and efficiency – no chocolate on top of his cappuccino or cheeky pastry before the screening in the RFH for him… he reminds me of the moving statue in My Grandmother (1929).

 

Doug plays Ahmed, the Thief of Bagdad who starts the film off as self-interested and faithless taking whatever he wants whenever he wants to and laughing in the faith of authority of any kind. All of this changes when he chances to see and fall in love with The Princess of Bagdad (Julanne Johnston) and, after his cheeky ways lead him into more trouble than he can bear, he resolves to win her heart through honest endeavour. It’s interesting to see quotes in the intertitles from the Quran and to see Ahmed making peace with the Imam (Charles Belcher) who tells him, naturally, to follow his heart… try making this film these days and screening it in our flag-infested high streets?

 

Julanne Johnston and Fairbanks Snr

Against this regal and religious Bagdad stands Cham Shang, Prince of the Mongols (Japanese actor Sōjin Kamiyama) who wants to invade and enslave the kingdom and to have the Princess for his own. He has a spy in her handmaidens in the form of Anna May Wong who as you’d expect makes the most of her role especially in the scene in which Ahmed first breaks into the royal quarters and pushes a very phallic knife against her back, at least in the interpretation of filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker in her introduction.²

 

Ahmed must compete with the Mongols and also the princes of the Indies and Persia to bring home the greatest wonders from the furthest reaches of the world a grand quest involving flying carpets, flying horses, crystal balls and a box of delights. It is perhaps the most spectacular silent film ever made and certainly one of the most thoroughly enjoyable especially with Mr Brand’s flying accompaniment.

 

Both films are glorious and I am glad I waited to see them first on the big screen in a live setting. Now I can’t wait to watch my Blu-rays and work out exactly how the magic is wrought.

Meanwhile, plenty more Anna May Wong to come over the next three weeks... details on the BFI site.

 

Anna May Wong a spy in the house of love?

1.       According to The New York Times, 16^th August 1924 who reported that Bronson had sent a thank you telegram to the author: "I feel like a new Cinderella, thanks to you. I realize the importance of your trust in me and my tremendous responsibility. I am the luckiest girl in the world. Betty Bronson."

 

2.       Michelle Williams Gamaker featured a clip from her film Thieves (2023) part of her Fictional Activism initiative which is concerned with “… the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures, who return in her works as brown protagonists to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.” Details on her website here.

 

Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1928), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

“We never tried to get very far from what was real… (the Derby hats) … gave what we felt these characters’ needed: phoney dignity! There’s nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb!”

 

Eureka’s first Stan and Ollie set showed how in 1927 they emerged as a double act with appearances in films gradually evolving their interplay and characterisation as the iconic duo who has made the world split its sides for very nearly a century. Now with this second set we get a chance to see their first golden year as a duo in ten short films available in restored transfers on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. What more do you need to know, the link to order is at the bottom and as we’re alone can I ask you just why you haven’t already got your copy?

There’s a fascinating video essay among the fulsome extras from David Cairns and Fiona Wilson which really gets to the heart of the enduring hilarity created by Laurel and Hardy and from which I drew the above quote from Stan in one of his rare expressions on their style and purpose. Cairns and Wilson act as our companions to these timeless lords of comedy and the instinctive love and laughter becomes clearer as it is shared and explained in personal ways that are shared by so many. We are all Sons and Daughters of the Desert, we all stand on our dignity, pick ourselves up and keep on trying against the odds, constructing our own folly in real time up until the moment when things are so broken, it’s the end of the film.

It's a Video Essay of the Year award contender and it’s only Spring. The quote from Spike Milligan they include sums up so much: “The first time I saw them on screen, I knew they were my friends…” and this has been passed down from the moment my grandad James told me how good they were; any friends of Jim’s were going to be mine as well.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam and, as with 1927, it’s so instructive and hilarious to watch them develop and consolidate the greatest comedy duo in cinematic history.

 

February 1928

 

The Finishing Touch, with Neil Brand score

 

Filmed in December 1927 in a relatively long shoot of just over two weeks, possibly related to the extensive mechanical gags as Patrick Vasey of the L&H Podcast suggests, this film is one of my personal favourites. The lads play two construction labourers who are employed to finish off a wooden house build by noon, next Monday for $500… Their confidence to complete the task is, of course in sharp contrast to their ability and over the two reels there are so many classic moments of painful slapstick as their inability is demonstrated time and again.

 

Edgar Kennedy is on hand as an exasperated cop whilst Dorothy Coburn is the nurse who tells them to keep the noise down for her patients… Now fighting both the forces of law as well as physics their failure is magnificently funny!

January 1928

 

Leave ’em Laughing, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

Be careful, you might make him nervous!

 

Famously, in our family, my Grandad Jim, a joiner and part-time boxer, used to remove his own rotten teeth sitting by the fire in Wavertree Liverpool. As Jim first exposed me to Laurel and Hardy it’s a joy to see an episode involving tooth ache and the Boys’ attempts at home-made treatment for Stan’s toothache … this is the World just passed (we hope). David Kalat in his commentary askes just how is it that these films stay fresh? For me it’s that childhood fascination with Grandad’s extraordinary dental handy work… especially given mine and Stan’s fear of the dentist’s office.

This we see as the Boys unable to do what Our Jim did, head to the dentists and before you know it laughing gas filled the place and our stoned heroes are off to try and drive whilst laughing their heads off. Cars crash and – of course – Edgar Kennedy’s traffic cop gets to boil over and steam!

 

Anita Garvin and the frustrating fruit

March 1928

From Soup to Nuts, with Neil Brand score

 

One thing about Stan—with apologies to a lot of directors—they thought they were directing him. And they thought they were directing the picture. But Stan was the one...He was very clever about it.

Anita Garvin interview, "She Took Her Lumps and Liked Them", Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1978

 

Here we start with the newly enriched Culpeppers played by Tiny Sandford and Anita Garvin who made over 350 films and who worked on eleven Laurel and Hardy films. The couple are hosting a party to impress their new peers and end up hiring itinerant hospitality workers, Stan and Ollie as waiters – the best available on short notice. We know things are not going to work out and they don’t work out splendidly aided by Garvin’s classic battle with a cherry as she tries to work out the polite way to eat a fruit salad, echoing Stan’s previous routine in The Second Hundred Years. As David Kalat says in his commentary, Stan trusted Anita with his material and she makes a meal out of it!

Also featured is another semi-regular, Edna Marion as Agnes the Maid although she would not enjoy the same career as Garvin who, as Kalat says, was offered opportunities to form a female comedy team – find out more by buying this set!

And if the band you're in sgtarts playing different tunes...

 

April 1928

You’re Darn Tootin’ with score from Neil Brand

 

Edgar Kennedy gets to stand in the safety behind the camera directing this one which features Stan and Ollie as a dysfunctional paid of musicians with the former’s clarinet and the latter’s French horn simply not following the instructions from conductor (Otto Lederer). Neil Brand provides expert accompaniment and commentary and, obviously, this is very much the film for him especially this opening silent orchestral slapstick. There is so much comedy content this is so re-watchable which, also of course, was not the way they were originally intended: Stan and Ollie expected their work to be experienced in the moment and not repeated and at the viewers’ leisure… we are lucky.

After being sacked for uselessness the two players end up on the streets and busking… what could possibly go wrong… on the streets… all those workers and pedestrians to connect with, all those shins to kick and stomachs to thump! Comedy chaos and more of that mutually assured de-bagging!

 

May, 1928

 

Their Purple Moment, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

A fine day for mischief!!

 

Was the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo and foreshadowing their later films, has them married and desperate to find time together and away. Here Stan’s wife, as played by Fay Holderness, already looks like trouble as she keeps a tight rein on his paycheque even as he tries to smuggle away enough money for “hobbies”. Ollie is similarly micro-managed in similar style by Lyle Tayo “I’ll teach you to hold out two dollars on me!” – these are marriages based on antagonism as Neil Brans says in his commentary.

The boys make good their escape and offer to help two young women, Slapstick Kay Deslys and the Glamourous Anita Garvin who have been abandoned by two suitors unwilling to pay their tab at a restaurant. Stan and Ollie believe they are flush but Stan’s wife has found and taken his hidden stash meaning that they too have no way to pay the bill… As Kay slips over going back into the restaurant, the local gossip Patsy O'Byrne spies them and reports back. We know exactly what is going to happen but what a joy when it does!

As Neil Brand observes, by this stage director Leo McCarey – and the duo – had worked out that they were so reliable as comedy foils for each other, that the narrative could be slowed down and allowed to play out with their expressiveness and intimate silent discourse guaranteed to reach the boiling point of hilarity.

 

Collateral... Dorothy Coburn 

September 1928

 

Should Married Men Go Home? piano accompaniment Neil Brand

You’re going in, you started it!

 

Spotting Stanley on his way with his golf club, Mr and Mrs Hardy (the excellent Kay Deslys) pretending to be out all to no avail as the check jacketed and four-plus wearing bore finds them out. After breaking a chair and generally behaving like a misbehaving child in front of his exasperated parents – as Glenn Mitchell observes in his well-informed commentary (well, he did write the Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia!) Ollie is allowed out to play, conveniently wearing his golfing outfit underneath his dressing gown.

Here their escape leads to them making up a four on the golf course with two very pretty young women – a blonde (Edna Marion) and a brunette (the vivacious Viola Richard – who had also featured with the Boys in a number of their 1927 films as well as Charly Chase’s brilliant Limousine Love (1928)). There’s some business involving a drug store and a too expensive round of soda followed by some golfing antics with Edgar Kennedy and his hairpiece! Events are topped off by a mass mud-fight as an exasperated Edgar splashes Dorothy Coburn who retaliates, misses and the rest is an enormous dry-cleaning bill.

The Fountianhead

October 1928

 

Early to Bed, piano accompaniment by Neil Brand

Whilst this was the year in which the boys consolidated their personas but there are still examples of them playing variations on the themes we mostly know. Here Ollie inherits a fortune and employs Stan as his butler but soon gets bored and starts to disrupt his own party. This is an interesting watch given the times and the unusual set up and the two do not disappoint when it comes to delivering the keys to life and happiness: clue, it’s not money, money can’t buy you laughter.

Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness provide commentary and both are quite concerned about the amount of bullying in this class tale – money has not treated Oliver well – and whilst we know there will be a come-uppance it’s perhaps not as even-handed as their usually balanced universe. I like the fountain gag which Leo McCarey had used to greater effect in the Mabel Normand and Creighton Hale film, Should Men Walk Home? which also featured Hardy as a waiter! Here Ollie doesn’t quite his just deserts and we can make of that what we will…

 

 

November 1928

Two Tars

As Glenn Mitchell explains in his commentary, this is one of the duo’s greatest films as well as, not uncoincidentally, one of their most anarchic and destructive with motor vehicular abuse that wouldn’t be out of place in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend which also features an endless traffic jam and society pushed to the limits of civilised behaviours. That might be a bit rich but why not?

Our heroes play two “dreadnaughts” from the USS Oregon a late-Victorian era battleship by now a decommissioned relic, who driving a rickety Ford model-t, come across two young women, a blonde (Ruby Blaine) and a brunette (Thelma Hill) who are struggling to extract their purchase from a bubble gum machine. Cue an outbreak of tie-twiddling and winsome shyness from the boys before they step out to save the day. Things do not go to plan and, after a short battle with shopkeeper (Brummie Charlie Hall who Mitchell explains was the most frequent guest in the Boys’ films), they make good their escape.

A pleasant afternoon’s drive with the girls is spoiled by a traffic jam and “reciprocal destruction” on a scale rarely seen – a Kwik Fix version of Battle of the Century with more and more drivers and their cars caught up in a mad whirl of push and shove with the players and cars described in detail by Glenn Mitchell in sixth gear! Excellent work all round!

 

December 1928

 

Habeas Corpus with original synchronised score

 

This is all together a more sedate affair which doesn’t reach the intensity of Tars but which features one of Stan’s more outlandish scenarios in which he and Ollie are engaged by a mad Professor (Richard Carle) to exhume a dead body for his experiments. This is the first film they made with a synchronised sound score combining music and sound effects which here is featured in restored form. There are some interesting choices of music – Danse Macabre - to modern ears it is occasionally too on the nose but you do have to imagine the audience hearing this for the first time.

The Prof’s butler, Ledoux – our Charlie Hall again - is also an undercover cop and follows the lads as they make their way to do the deed in the local cemetery, in the dead of night… There follows much self-scaring as confusion and the pursuing Ledoux, covered in a sheet (of course…) unsettle the big pay night.

 

December 1928

 

We Faw Down with original synchronised score

 

This film as David Kalat and Patrick Vasey discuss in their commentary, is an attempt by director Leo McCarey to focus more on the personalities and the character of not just Stan and Ollie but also their better halves as played by Bess Flowers (Mrs Laurel) and Vivien Oakland (Mrs. Hardy). The two men want to go to a poker game and make up a story about going to the Orpheum Theatre only to end up “making whoopee” with two women they meet on the street - Kay Deslys and Vera White. There’s some very bad table manners with various face pokes and slapstick accompanied by woman’s laughter and the synchronised score before Kay’s man returns – boxer "First Round" Kelly (the fearsome George Kotsonaros) but this is as nothing to the reckoning that awaits back home…

 

This film has polarised opinion a bit but both Kalat and Vasey point out the importance of watching it with an audience with the former explaining how well one screening went. So please, watch these discs with your family, your friends, your pets or anyone you can grab passing by. The more, the merrier! Live Cinema laughs harder!

 

There is a limited edition of just 2000 copies which comes with a slipcase and a collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall.

 

There are a welter of special features:

• 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restoration
• Brand new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Wilson
• Brand new interview with Neil Brand - essential analysis of 1928!
• Scores by a variety of silent film composers - see above! A sonic feast!
• Brand new audio commentaries by film historian and writer David Kalat, Patrick Vasey, (editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast), film writer Chris Seguin, Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films), Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia) and silent film accompanist Neil Brand
• Alternate Robert Youngson score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne
• Super 8 presentations of Dizzy Heights, Let ’em Rip, Out of Step and The Car Wreckers
• On Location with Laurel and Hardy – 1928 home movie footage of Laurel and Hardy
• Stills Galleries for each short

 

It is absolutely essential and you can order direct from the Eureka Store right here…

  

 

Mary, Mungo and Neil… Hippfest at Home, Hippfest 2025

As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well it is now in it’s 15^th edition.

The hottest ticket for this year was as Alison said, Mr Neil Brand who gave the most entertaining talk about his singular career from his first professional accompaniment – Buster’s Sherlock Jnr (1924) – to his most recent – in the most “meta” moment he had to improvise to a mystery film selected by Alison. Neil, always so eloquent and, damn it, charming, had my entire family rapt as Dad’s choice suddenly engaged them all – “ah Georges Méliès!” said the son lured away from his PS5 – “I really must see Nosferatu…” said the daughter and “so that’s my friend Netti’s old landlady!” said my wife watching Cecil Hepworth’s eldest Elizabeth aged two who we met in Camden in the 1990s in her 80s. Even Mungo the dog was of course transfixed by Rover, the Hepworth’s dog, who outwits a kidnapper by driving his getaway vehicle back home… something to aspire to young pup but not in my car!

Neil had updated a show and tell he’d previously performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was a story not just of his career and method but also silent film and its revival over the last few decades. He talked of his audition with the BFI and how his acting training had helped inform his response to Sherlock Jnr, a quite intimidating work from an actual genius who gave signals not just to his audience but also the players he knew would accompany his film. Neil recalls the exact moment when the audience’s reaction inspired him to follow Buster’s promptings in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

Neil Brand

Dullard that I am, I’ve mostly focused on the silent film live experience from the perspective of accompaniment and film without really understanding the impact the audience reaction to both has on the player and vice versa. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and this is a Mobius Strip of emotion and anticipation. Neil showed Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Billy Wilder’s People on Sunday (1930) and got the audience to score the mood by a show of hands during key moments. Not only were our anticipations split on the direction of Wilder’s smart scripting, but Neil was able to flavour the narrative in ways that reinforced the second-guessing. It was a virtuosic performance all round from a consummate communicator.

We had the wonders of  Méliès’ hand-coloured Impossible Voyage (1906), the dark-heart of the definitive vampire film, Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and finished off with a clever home movie called Early Birds which was a colour film from the fifties (? nowt on IMDN but it was Alison’s Mystery Film after all!) in which a baby escapes from his cot, totters along the hall, shuffles down the stairs and makes a mess in the kitchen. It was delightful and Neil talked us through his musical reaction to this most unpredictable of delights.

It was genuine family entertainment and all on Catherine’s birthday too – the best thing on telly!

Mr Brand and the Baby

The Pride of the Clan (1917), with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry

 

There was also drama on a grander scale from one of the great originators of the art of film performance, Mary Pickford in Maurice Tourneur’s The Pride of the Clan (1917). This was a recording of the Friday night gala introduced by Alison and the doyen of silent filmography, Pamela Hutchinson both of whom looked like they’d just stepped off the Oscar’s red carpet. This film was also accompanied by the dreamy team of Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry who had previously accompanied the fabulous The Swallow and the Titmouse (1924) a film that really suits their combination of piano and harp.

Mary plays Marget MacTavish who takes over as Chieftain of the clan after her father drowns at sea. She’s about to marry Jamie Campbell (Matt Moore) and there’s some silliness with couples in the clan biting sixpence in half so they can hang it around each other’s necks – HG Wells should have sued! But it’s all in fun even when Jamie is revealed to be of noble blood and his birth mother tries to sweep him away to polite society. Yeah, good luck with that lady, this is Mary P you’re contending with…

Tourneur’s locations are well chosen to create a genuinely Caledonian feel and the FOMO was real as Elizabeth-Jane’s harp Oberon added further Celtic magic along with Stephen’ expert innovations as the silent film equation gained an extra element with the two telepathically in tune with audience and each other following Mary’s lead on screen. I saw this film in Pordenone but it was presented here in the way that only Hippfest can: the fifth element!

 

The Near Shore: A Scottish and Irish Cine-Concert, with Patrick Smyth

 

As someone who is more Irish and Scottish than English – what do you expect from Liverpool la’? – I was especially impressed with the selection of the five films that made up this Cine-Concert. These shorts were all from the IFI Irish Film Archive and National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive and introduced by Sunniva O’Flynn from the IFI – you cannot understate how international Hippfest is, with collaborators from Norway and Sweden, over to the Americas and beyond.

It began with the earliest known film made by an Irishman, Royal Clyde Yacht Club (1899), which featured a race in the Firth of Clyde and then Ireland by Air – featuring Scottish aviatrix Winnie Drinkwater (1933) which also returned via the Firth with stunning views of my favourite Isle of Arran and a mist-covered Goatfell. Before that we saw shots of Galway – historical family location of The Joyces – and an Ireland still between the centuries with ducks and donkeys in the streets mixed with grand municipal buildings.

As a former Butlins employee – a Hi-de-hi-d for two summer seasons in my youth – I was impressed with Butlins camp photographer John Tomkins’ tow films – Butlins Holiday Camp and Rush Hour (1950s). Tomkins filmed the inmates, sorry holiday-makers, and then screened the films so they could see themselves at the end of the week. This is so much in the spirit of Butlin’s and I especially loved the one in which the children take over, robbing the redcoats blazers as they are frozen by some child’s magic… it was all, literally a dream.

Galway, 1933.

Finally, there was The Farm below the Mountain (1958), Scottish filmmaker Ernest Tiernan’s record of his travels with his young bride Kathleen to meet her family in rural Ireland… so familiar and in beautiful home-movie colour. We have something like this at home… maybe not so well shot!

The films were accompanied by renowned Irish avant-garde pianist, Paul G. Smyth who overlayed some lush textures on these films just out of memory and so full of human commonality. In the Hippodrome there’s no separation by time, we’re all connected as elements of the live cinematic mix, even from home we’re at the Hippfest home.

Until next year then and a visit in person, I think the family are convinced now! Thank you all for the wonder and the show.

 

Elementary… Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace

If it’s Wednesday it must be London and the magnificent, arrested decay of the Alexandra Palace Theatre which as the BFI’s Jean Mitri awardee Bryony Dixon said in her introduction was not only contemporary with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series as published in The Strand magazine but also the films based on his work made by the Stoll Picture Company. The Theatre was originally opened in 1875 and was screening films as early as 1906 with the tin projector room installed in the early twenties still remaining. After 80 years of closure, the venue is being restored in much the same way as these three films we saw screened, with just 44 more to go…

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano. My mother was a huge appreciator of Ms MacGregor’s classical work and she would have loved this evening of exemplary musicality and performance.

 

The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. A vastly experienced stage actor, Norwood so impressed the author with his obsessive attempts to bring every detail of Holmes to light that he gushed about his “brooding eye” and his “rare quality, which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing.”

 

Screen presence - Eille Norwood  (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

That original materials survive for these films is remarkable but as Bryony pointed out, duplicate positives were made in the fifties and sixties and so the BFI was thinking ahead – not for nothing is it one of the leading archives in the world. For two of these films those duplicated formed the basis of photochemical and digital restoration whilst the third, the shattering The Final Problem (1923), was based on a tinted nitrate original and looked stunning.

 

That film left us literally on a cliff-hanger but the future of this series is ensured and I look forward to watching everyone… the French may have had Louis Feuillade but we had Maurice Elvey and then George Ridgwell, who directed the second and third series. The project is in collaboration with Iron Mountain Entertainment and will make this unique collection available on home media as well as on the big screen. Tonight, we had episodes from across the series all of which showed the flavour of the Eile Sherlock and the ways these wonderful stories were adapted for the big screen.

 

Sherlock and the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton)

A Scandal in Bohemia (1921), score Joseph Havlat

 

This was the seventh in the series and Norwood crams a lot of character into his screen time ably enabled by Elvey’s economy and focus. So many stock Sherlock moments are concentrated into this film that it underlines Doyle's desciption of “glamour”: one early example is the detective noticing that his companion Dr Watson (the ever-present Hubert Willis) has employed a new housemaid who has been over-rigorous in cleaning his shoes. I noticed that modern Sherlock writer, Stephen Moffat was on hand and probably making notes furiously!

 

Doyle was impressed with Norwood’s “quite unrivalled power of disguise…” and in Scandal we’re treated to a taxicab driver so convincing that The Strand reported he was nearly ejected from the studios as a trespasser! He also plays a non-conformist minister in his attempts to trick Irene Adler (Joan Beverley) into revealing the whereabouts of her incriminating pictures of her affair with the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton). Of course, Watson is fooled every time but Miss Adler proves to be altogether as smart as Sherlock… 

 

Miles Mander makes an appearance as Godfrey Norton, Irene’s true love interest and – surprisingly perhaps for those who have seen his later silent work, he’s not a bounder but a thoroughly decent chap!

 

Watson, Prof Coram (Cecil Morton York) and Sherlock

The Golden Prince-Nez (1922), score Neil Brand

The quirkiest of the three, this puzzler was the 14^th of the second series – directed by George Ridgwell who covered series two and three after Elvey moved on – and  involved the death of one Professor Coram’s secretary, who died clutching his killer’s eyeglasses in his hand. Sherlock quickly deduces that the murderer was a short-sighted woman with a broad nose and so it proves just not the one the police grab. There’s always a twist and a logical explanation and this one was a doozy.

 

Norwood has such presence and also a twinkle in his eye – his Sherlock enjoys the challenges and, just like our puppy Mungo, likes showing off how clever he is! Here the mystery is “readable” by the viewers and we can join in matching wits with the detective and the guilty parties.

 

Percy Standing and Eille grappling...

The Final Problem (1923), score Joanna MacGregor

 

To Cheddar Gorge and the culmination of Sherlock’s final battle with his criminal nemesis, Professor Moriarty… This was the last of the series and was directed by George Ridgwell. Here Holmes faces his evil equal, Moriarty (Percy Standing) with both men nearing the end of their tether after a series of bruising score draws in the streets of London. Sherlock makes a number of early signifying references to being willing to stop the man even at the cost of his own life.

 

He thwarts the evil schemer one more time and, leaving instructions with the police of Moriarty’s gang’s secret lair, heads of for some relaxation with Watson at Cheddar Gorge… it’s not quite the Reichenbach Falls but you may guess what’s coming. This featured stunning tints - restored from an original nitrate print – which really brought out the flavours of the locations and the epic battle of wits.

 

The orchestrations were powerful and evocative with each composer taking a slightly different route but delivering compositionally and as scores illustrating these timeless tales. Norwood plus time equals more or less Cumberbatch and I have the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on my side. MacGregor tackled her dual role with ease and the players brought out rich textures in each approach creating a seamless whole of pure invention, deduction and delightful problem-solving verve!

 

Neil Brand and Joseph Havlat take their bows (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

The Final Problem was written in 1893 and viewers of 1923 would have been fully aware that Sherlock would return as he did originally in 1903’s The Adventure of the Empty House… but, as then, the finale here seems final. But, gentle reader, do not worry about our favourite sleuth for he will return, along with Maurice Elvey, in the feature film The Sign of Four (1923).

 

And now we must await further developments and restorations for the rest of the series; this was a most exciting entrée to the programme and probably the biggest such undertaking since the Hitchcock Nine back in 2012. I can’t wait.

Joanna MacGregor (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Fourth row back, chap with the beard, looks quite concerned... that's me! (Photo Colby Todisco BFI)