Fool in love... The Vampire (1913), Made in New Jersey, Milestone Blu-ray

 

“The pair at the Fifth Avenue this week go into a disagreeable number with a degree of vivid detail that is almost medical…”

"Rush", Variety, July 1909

In July 1909 dancers Alice Eis and Bert French put on their "Vampire Dance" at the Fifth Avenue theatre. The act featured Eis as "a Parisian woman of the streets" striking "a particularly snaky posture…” culminating in the removal of a "thin red veil", revealing a tight-fitting dress with "a skirt slashed almost to the waistline and the only underdressing is a covering of fleshings." The New York Dramatic Mirror was equally outraged at this “vulgarity…” - “…to call it a dance is a libel against the name of art." ¹

 

Despite or let’s be frank, because of this Eis and French were very popular and were still packing out halls in February 1913 when they were arrested for giving an “indecent performance” at Hammerstein’s Victoria in New York’s Times Square. Such were the double standards of the press and the public during an era when Vaudeville, as Andrew L. Erdman² notes, became an excuse for showing audiences more flesh in the name of art. Naturally the new medium of film wanted to get in on the act and perhaps looking at Italian films showing classical tales, looked for ways to illuminate stories with morally-defensible artistic statements.

 

So it was that Robert Vignola captured the dance on film for this three-reel morality tale that – as per Richard Koszarski’s excellent sleeve notes accompanying Milestones’ epic two-disc collection – he fleshed out this film to act as a pretext for showing Eis and French. I’d come across the film when the dace section was screened at the Kennington Bioscope as part of Tony Fletcher’s evening covering the release, one of 2025’s most essential and a most thorough compilation of the films made in New Jersey, before and after the move to Hollywood.

 

This film is a standout because, all salaciousness apart, the dance is very interesting, capturing the kind of movements you’d expect from the, sadly never filmed, Isadora Duncan and other modern dancers such as Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn who are seen in Griffith’s Intolerance and who would later feature a young Louise Brooks in their Denishawn company. It’s also possible that the producers had seen Asta Nielsen’s outrageous dance with her cowboy, leather dress and whip in Urban Gad’s Afgrunden (1910) and wanted some home-grown source. I don’t know, who really understands how the Marketing Mind works?

 

It’s not all about “art” though and you can also blame Rudyard Kipling who wrote his poem, The Vampire after being inspired by a drawing by his cousin Philip William Burne-Jones.  This was was included in the frontispiece of the first edition published by Boston Press in 1898…

A fool there was and his goods he spent,

   (Even as you or I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent

(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),

But a fool must follow his natural bent

   (Even as you or I!)

The picture and the poem, first impression for sale on Abe Books...

 

Anyone who has seen the Theda Bara film, A Fool There Was (1915) will have seen this Vampire/Vamp role perfected but Vignola’s film remains the earliest known attempt to capture the essence of the lady who drains her victims of their wealth, energy and pride. Whether the Baronet Burne-Jones or his cousin had first hand experience of such company one could only guess but whether in art, literature, stage or screen sex sells and sex-witchery especially is always popular with the patriarchy.

 

I am going to the city to make my fortune…

For the film, the story begins in the countryside just north of New York City as it was in the days when Hackensack was still countryside. A hardworking young couple, Harold (Harry F. Millarde) and Helen (Marguerite Courtot) are saving up to get married and the former decides to head off to New York to get work after tiring of rural life. Cue fond farewell and a train ride from the sepia tinted countryside to monochromatic Manhattan where Harold finds digs and an office job for which his agricultural experience serve him well.

Six months’ later he has saved $500 and she $100 and they’re close to affording that wedding until one day spending his hard-earned in an expensive café he encounters a woman in a tight-fitting dress with a jewelled armband and an eye for men with fulsome wallets. Her name is Sybil (Alice Hollister) and she is the Vampire your mother may have warned you about. Soon she has set her sights on the hapless Harold and the only way is down. For those who love Reel Streets, Sybil’s is on Claremont Avenue just off Broadway after you pass Columbia University on the Upper West Side.

Harold’s letters home tail off as does his commitment to the farm products trade with the result that he loses his job and Helen, concerned about his lack of communication, comes to the Big City to find him. She’s soon facing her own difficulties as a man tries to lure her into sex work, in a line freely borrowed from many a tale of trafficking and the white slave trade such as the hit Traffic in Souls released a month after this film in November 1913. Another Dane, August Blom, made Den hvide slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) in 1910 and this was followed by two sequels such was its popularity (although banned in the US…).

Helen thinks on her feet though and makes a daring escape down the fire escape against a backdrop of New York clothes lines – it’s a well-made film with camerawork that whilst static does capture the atmosphere and action well. Helen get’s a job in a hat shop just as Harold hits rock bottom… Rejected by Sybil and with no money he plans to rob a rich theatre goer but, bored of waiting, he goes inside and watches the performance that will turn his life around.

The dance was performed at Cliffside Park near to the Kalem Studios under natural light as the stills show even as the camera framed it as being in the music hall. Harold watches the Vampire Dance and realises what a fool there was…. Thus, the importance of public arts programmes is proven and well, you can only imagine what happens next!

Philip Carli accompanies and is completely in tune with this entertainment as you would expect. The picture quality is exceptional and Milestone have done a splendid job with this set which I can’t recommend highly enough.

You can purchase direct from Milestone/Kino Lorber in the US and Canada whilst those overseas can find the Blu-ray in all the old familiar places!

 

 

¹ From Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915, Andrew L. Erdman, City University of New York

 

Modern love… An Old Fashioned Boy (1920) with Philip Carli, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Three

Great marital unhappiness believed to be due to apartment hotels and dogs…

 

This film only survives as a 16mm print at UCLA and was screened as part of the American women screen writers’ series having been penned by Agnes Christine Johnson who enjoyed a long career and collaborated with King Vidor on the fabulous Show People (1928) as well as writing for Pickford and many more.

 

Directed by Jerome Storm it stars Charles Ray at the relatively short-lived peak of his popularity, looking ten years younger and still the All-American Boy earning some $11,000 a week (approximately $142,000 today) according to his obituary in The Evening Independent of 20^th November 1943. He made a fortune and then lost it as a would-be film producer but from this film it’s clear his face was not the only contributing factor.

 

An Old Fashioned Boy is very much a new-fashioned film, being a light-hearted examination of gender expectations with mass appeal at the time. There was a shift in living choices and there was concern that women would be distracted from their traditional roles by too much being provided for them in so-called apartment hotels where food and laundry could be outsourced from the home. Not quite sure how dogs came to be a threat to the American family – personally I’d have put the finger on cats! – but there you go; many things today make less sense.

Charles Ray and Ethel Shannon

Johnson’s scenario involves two couples, or rather one potential couple and one married pair complete with a trio of “angels” of which more later… Ray is David Warrington who is the titular romantic who dreams of putting his Betty (Ethel Shannon) on a pedestal complete with stairs to enable her to run down to the kitchen every few hours as well as the washroom. He’s so convinced they’re the perfect couple that he even builds a new house for Betty before he has proposed. Some might say that’s presumptive and, well, we’ll see…

 

David’s friends the Smiths are married and not enjoying anything like his vision of contentment. Herbert (Wade Boteler) is cynical and perpetually grumpy complaining about loaning their living room out for David to court Betty. His wife Sybil (Grace Morse) is long-suffering and takes the slings and arrows of outrageous Herbert as well as providing for him and those aforementioned angels: Violet, Herbie and a baby played by Virginia Brown who is very good at crying and reaching out her arms.

 

Three kids and a baby!

David is successful in his proposal and takes Betty to see a house his “friend” has built for his fiancée. Betty likes the house but, oh dear, wouldn’t want to live there so wedded is she to the freedoms of apartments. And, when she hears that David built the house for her before even asking for her hand, takes against his rather odd behaviour and storms out.

 

Betty is pretty flighty as she’s soon seeing her former beau, Fast-Car-Ferdie, or at least Ferdie who owns a sports car, and forgetting all about Drippy Dave. Meanwhile Sybil has had enough and decides to go home to mother. Quite understandably she can’t take her three children… so… she decides to leave them with David telling him on no account to tell her potentially former husband, Herbert, where they are.

 

Now, this all sounds fine and the actions of a reasonable and balanced parent under stress but in reality, Sybil has left her kids in danger with David’s solution to childcare being to muck about and fill the three of them with home-made taffy. They eat so much they get sick and so David calls Betty’s father, Doctor Graves (Alfred Allen) who he then persuades to ask his daughter to come and help. Betty’s trained as a nurse and so puts the kids to bed like a pro before making to leave forcing David to get her father to put the house in quarantine and to make up a new medical condition, Black Measles.

 

Betty can’t leave now and nor can Ferdie when he arrives to take her home… there follows much high-spirited daftness as Betty’s emotional response to her would-be husband ranges from impatience, extreme anger and borderline psychotic.

 

All of this covers an interesting “debate” on the role of women and men even as it allows Ray to show his superb comic timing and winning range of expressions. One of my favourite moments comes as Herbert accuses David of having an affair with Sybil at which point, she decks him with an absolute haymaker of a right hook leaving him unconscious. Proof that these films were sophisticated and attuned to the sensibilities of their audience.

 

The daft premise and entire story arc play on audiences’ preconceptions and they were no less aware of the “joke” than we are now. There was much praise in the contemporary press according to film historian April Miller in the Giornate notes with Louis Reeves Harrison in Moving Picture World (13 November 1920) singling Johnson out for with creating a “flawless structure” for “this bright story”.

 

Miller also quote the author as saying “women have too much creative energy to spend it merely on housekeeping. You get neurasthenic if you have only one line…” even asserting she was “a much better tempered wife and mother” when working, “… so used to writing with the babies crying”. Very much the “new-fangled” woman Betty wanted to be!

Philip Carli played along with characteristic flare and deep understanding of "the argument", that American sense of humour is not to be under-estimated!

 

More in store streaming from Pordenone, details on the web.

 

My ship is coming in... Captain Salvation (1927) with Philip Carli, Orchestra San Marco, Pordenone Giornate del Cinema Muto

This was my film of the day without a doubt as it was the only film I saw today (thanks London fog etc) but others would be hard-pressed to compete with the visceral visuals of a larger than life Lars Hanson, massive Marceline Day, super-sized Pauline Starke and the gigantic sounds of Philip Carli with a full orchestra.

Lars Hanson, was the poster boy for last year’s festival but, presumably, got lost at sea, soon made up for lost time by forging ahead in the festival's glamorous opening gala. Was it worth the wait… but of course! The Swede’s tardiness was soon blown away by the forceful squals of this film – minds thrown to the elements and survival more than salvation the driver as Lars’ self-doubting preacher rediscovers himself with the help of a bad woman.

Worse things happen at sea and, if this film is anything to go by, that is entirely the case. But all the elements combined to magnificent affect in the Teatro Verdi: perfect, pure Pordenone on day one, just like last year with The Crowd.

So, began my second year at Pordenone’s unique Giornate del Cinema Muto … My debut is so still fresh that this year I barely looked right to see Venice, so intent was I on the Festival. One of tonight's comperes quoted David Robinson saying “welcome home”, but it’s not just the familiar, it’s a week-long Christmas full of unopened presents, all with World-class live musical accompaniment… It may be raining gatti e cani but who cares: no outdoor screenings are planned.

Captain Salvation was pleasing viewing as a Warner Archives DVD but tonight it was a genuinely uplifting combination of Carli’s sympathetic score and a story that is at least as much of the need for forgiveness and understanding as of spiritual concerns. You don’t have to believe in an ancient deity to want to treat people fairly and Anson Campbell stands up for what he believes as the local community turns on him for defending a fallen woman. This may well speaks to us as much now as in 1927 as our collective conscience tumbles backwards, grasping more at negativity as a way of defining a morality largely missing from every day.

Hanson’s Anson Campbell is young, vibrant and on the verge of priesthood and yet, he is always drawn back to the sea despite expectations. Lars’ sweetheart, Mary Phillips (the impossibly wholesome Marceline Day), is the daughter of the local priest and she looks forward to the time when he preaches from her father’s pulpit.

As its title suggests Captain Salvation deals with themes of Christianity and the sea - faith lost and regained on the edge of the world. Directed by John S. Robertson the film was based on the 1925 novel by Frederick William Wallace, a maritime journalist who had commanded a First World War Q-Ship. Not surprisingly, there's an authentic feel to the maritime action and if you like sailing ships, this film has some good ones.

The opening sees the return of Anson from seminary as the locals in a small coastal town gather to greet him. Robertson uses his locations well as Mary runs from her house to greet her lover but as his ship rolls into the quay he is also met with disappointment by his stern Uncle Peter Campbell (Sam De Grasse) who views his sea-going passions with disdain.

Anson is not dressed in a manner befitting the clergy and clearly enjoys the sea air far too much... The small God-fearing community follows Peter's lead and generally disapproves of Anson’s resistance to the call of the cloth, but Mary is head over heels and can only see the good in her man. The two share some lovely naturalistic moments on the beach as Anson presents Mary with a ring and proposes marriage… this section looks scripted (not all silent film was...) and Day can clearly be lip-read… you can almost hear them. Day is so freshly naturalistic and counterpoints the more intensely-expressive Larson well.

The weather changes and they both know a storm is on the way. They make it back to Anson’s friends’ house in time but are called out along with the rest of the village as a ship runs aground and survivors are hauled onto land. It’s a grim scene – a foretaste of what’s to come. One of these poor souls is that of Bess Morgan (Pauline Starke) a fallen woman who one crew mate blames for the wreck. There’s little sympathy form the locals with Uncle Peter suggesting that she recuperates in the jail “where she belongs”. This angers Anson who demands that she be treated like everyone else as a “person”.

Battle lines of compassion are drawn across the community as Bess stays with Anson and his reputation is ripped to shreds… even Mary cannot stand it and is finally unable to resist the pressure of her simple-minded kin – all too eager to judge rather than help. Reader, it’s pretty much like social media out there…

Pauline Starke

There seems nowhere left to turn and Anson follows Bess onto a schooner and a new life beyond the poisonous village. They board and are greeted by the larger than life Captain George Fawcett (all six feet and four inches of Ernest Torrence… Clara Bow’s co-star in Manhunt and brother of City Girl’s David as well as being an opera singer as I was reliably informed by a man from Bristol!). But, from the frying pan they have fallen through the fire and straight into Hell. This is a prison ship whose warders are more brutal than their inmates, each of whom is branded and treated like animals. Anson soon becomes dragged into the hideous depths of the hold whilst Bess must contend with the lecherous advances of the not so good Captain.

Torrence is great as the relentlessly callous officer and Starke is incredibly moving as the woman who’s hard-heart softens. Anson’s faith in her has given her belief in good even as Anson’s faith falls away as all around him look lost and without hope of charity. He is driven almost mad by the extent of the cruelty and the depths of their despair until he gains courage in return from the woman he has saved.

Now, make what you will of the film’s Christianity but there’s no denying that Captain Salvation is a powerful story. It’s specific on the nature of Bess’ wrong-doings – she chides one man for leaving before paying… and unflinching in the brutality of the prison ship… as Anson says, this is Hell.

Ernest: not singing

Pauline Starke is more of a clear match for Hanson than the winsome Day and she goes from hard-hearted pragmatism to compassion and Christian sacrifice. It’s a journey that could be so cliched but one that she makes convincingly and there were some moist eyes in the hall.

Philip Carli’s score as played by the Teatro San Marco’s house orchestra was gigantic, not overwhelming the film but enhancing it with some compelling melodies and rich, satisfying orchestration. As I said at the top: pure Pordenone and a great start to the week!

And now it's tomorrow and in a few hours my first full day starts. It's Cine-muto-Christmas!

Marceline (Sunny) Day

“Patriotism is not enough…” Dawn (1928), Stephen Horne, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day 7

This was one of the most moving films we’ve seen this week and all the more so for two ending beings shown, one from the Belgian digital transfer and the other from the BFI’s 35mm copy. There are differences between the two, not just the warmer tones of the film but also in the way that Nurse Cavell meets her end… the inevitability of violent death by gunshot.

Sybil Thorndike is outstanding as Nurse Edith Cavell and that final walk, her eyes wet with mortal fear, are truly heart-wrenching, bringing tears for the second time this week (the other occasion being the children of Vienna maimed by war). Stephen Horne played an absolute blinder with bass drum punching out Cavell’s final few paces in the first version and the piano taking the lead for the second. The accompaniment has to be as precisely judged as the action on screen and both were in step to devastating effect.

The Belgian version is the uncensored cut of what was a highly-controversial film… there was still plenty of sensitivity about this infamous episode and clearly, as the UK version shows, possible offense had to be limited.

This is not easy though especially when you have an actual member of Cavell’s team, Ada Bodart, playing herself… history as film, film actor as her own history.

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

After Dawn, a section on those Nasty Women was more than welcome and I especially laughed at the last, She's a Prince (1926) a crazy-cross-dressed, paparazzi-dumping, case of mistaken royal identity starring Billy Franey as the sorority “girl” formerly known as Prince and Alyce Ardell as… the “prince” formerly known as Alice.

The Swedish Challenge strand continues to impress and Thora van Deken (1920) featured a powerhouse performance from Pauline Brunius as the title character. She is fighting to protect her daughter’s inheritance by hiding her former husband’s will and Brunius display of determination in the face of her dubious action and motherly love is so… human. She was wrong but we are on her side… Brunius has the kind of face that can hold a movie on its own twisting conflicted emotions across strong features that fail to hide her darting eyes. This is why Swedish cinema was indeed “challenging” – completely naturalistic performance matched with films that deal in moral questions in a realistic and compelling way.

The restored print was more 2020 than 1920 and a delight to behold. It was a kind of Blue but emotions were melting through…

Maud Nelissen accompanied with pensive piano lines which perfectly matched this absorbing play of conscience and forbearance. I’d never heard of actress of film until this week and that, my friends, is what this show they call Le Giornate is all about!

On to the evening and two films from people I know and in films I’ve seen.

The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones

Rudyard Kipling’s The Vampire was written to accompany the exhibition of a illustration by his cousin Philip Burne-Jones depicting a female vampire; another link between cinema and painting as per Tableaux Vivants. This vampire is a sexual predator draining her partners of their energies, funds and self-respect. The poem begins with the line A fool there was… and warns against the folly of falling for women who “…could never know why and could never understand!” decent family society presumably.

It is not a hugely complex story but it has one massive power point: Theodosia Goodman aka Theda Bara who turns what could have been a run of the deMille Victorian morality tale in to very modern sexual picaresque. Her vamp is working her way through male batteries like there’s no tomorrow and lives only for herself and yet she’s doing it in style! We want to go to Theda’s parties, hang out at the clothes store for the endless fittings her cool, cool, cool clothes demand and tell the straights to just go hang!

Theda is a punk rocker, Theda is a punk rocker, etc...

Theda is punk – Siouxsie, Poly and Pauline Murray would be nothing without her approach to mascara – and has a wit that just blasts everyone else off screen. Yes, there are deeper meanings to the struggle between family and pheromones but we’d all like a friend like Theda… er, wouldn’t we?

This was a much better print than the one used for the old Kino DVD although the source material is sadly not perfect. Still a real thrill to see it projected and to have accompaniment from Philip Carli with the premier of his new score for quintet! The music was as closely fit as one of Theda’s dresses and played off the humour as much as the drama just as Theda and, indeed, you and I… Philip played piano and was joined by David Shemancik, Günter A. Buchwald, Romano Todesco and Cristina Nadal. They are Theda’s band for her next all-nighter!

Last up was another who took sexual liberation a major cinematic step forward with Pola Negri in Mania, her third film of the week and her first film (?). This is not the playful Pola of Carmen but an equally passionate one who follows her heart into all kinds of trouble. A matchgirl spotted as the face of the brand, she falls for the artist’s muso buddy and, two stars of kind of born as Mania uses her “connections” to get her guy a break… Needless to say he doesn’t appreciate it and, as is usual – Theda being the exception… the woman pays.

I’d seen Mania before at its UK premier in 2011 and it is a very impressive restoration with some gorgeous close-ups of our heroine and without her trademark eye makeup… but it’s not the mascara that maketh the woman it’s the personality! Pola is also “punk” as it happens: fresh, to the point and boundless…