Laugh in paradise… Siren of the Tropics (1927), Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Slapstick Festival 2021

Over ten years into my silent film hobby and this is the first full-length feature film I've seen with the legendary Josephine Baker. Rather remiss you may say but she has been on my list and this, appropriately enough, was her first feature film and, indeed, one of the very first films to feature a black actor as one of the leads this side of Oscar Micheaux, Richard E. Norman, Frank Peregini and other black filmmakers in the US. Hollywood was certainly not ready to go as far as French directors Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant do in La sirène des tropiques and other ethnicities often paid the price for involvement in the Caucasian world.

 

Their film does not necessarily follow the cliqued tramlines of other multi-ethnic stories but Miss Baker is treated as more overtly sexual than most white actors at this time – she’s topless twice -  and is portrayed as both innocent and with a childlike wildness; she attracts (white) male lust as well as love and protectiveness, revels in powerfully expressive jazz dancing – seriously, that *core* and the way she co-ordinates massive extensions without any apparent strain -  and yet remains in awe of western spirituality. So many questions… but, so used are we to seeing black actors now, that it’s a shock to see someone as naturalistic as her placed, largely, at the centre of a story in which race is not really mentioned.

Jospehine Baker

Slapstick 2020 was the last film festival I was able to physically attend and this year it has leapt online with some alacrity with a week’s worth of films, presentations and panel discussions all with newly commissioned musical accompaniment. This film was introduced by Akulah Agbami, Director of Sheba Soul Ensemble and BLACK Artists on the Move who explained Baker’s popularity in Europe, the film ran for many months in Paris where she was already famous and was premiered in Stockholm were her “exotic” charm was regarded as very fashionable. The film is probably the first to feature a black actress in a leading role amongst a white cast.

 

Live musical accompaniment was provided by Guenter A. Buchwald on piano and Frank Bockius on percussion, who, in addition to deploying an almost telepathic musical synchronicity, smartly avoided the cliches of cultural referencing. This being one of the great jazz babies, they gave us a rip-roaring, hi-tempo jazzed score that not only kept pace but lifted the film to the vibrational level of its all-powered star. When Baker eventually struts her considerable stuff towards the end of the film you felt that this is the moment the players had been pacing themselves for.

 

This was the musical equivalent of announcing, Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Josephine Baker… and it was as spine tingling a combination of artists across 94 years as you’d find!

Pierre Batcheff and Regina Thomas

Now there was also a film narrative involved and what a curious thing it was too… All starts in Paris where the rich and ruthless Comte Severo (Georges Melchior) does not take kindly to his goddaughter Denise (Regina Thomas) falling in love with the lowly but pretty, André Berval (Pierre Batcheff). The Count has already told his wife, the long-suffering Marquise Severo (Régina Dalthy) that he wants a divorce for, and I hope you’re sitting down, he wants to marry his goddaughter!

 

Severo talks him round and he seems to accept the match by offering to set up André to manage one of his new mines in the West Indies; he demands a “brilliant situation” for Denise’s husband and tells him to go off and succeed”. How-ever… this is all a ploy to dispose of engineering André and he writes to his man in the Caribbean saying that it would “suit” him very well if Monsieur Berval never returned to France.

 

This absolute rotter’s right-hand rascal is régisseur Alvarez (Kiranine who is wonderfully menacing), who has the good looks of a crumbling cliff face and the charm of stale Roquefort. He will follow his orders to the letter just when he’s finished trying to sexually harass Papitou (Baker) the free spirit who dwells in the colony of Monte Puebla. Papitou climbs up a wardrobe to avoid his clutches and there’s a hand-held camera showing his and her views; the menace is real enough. She calls on her dog to help her jump to freedom and they cower behind a log as Alvarez shoots at them, surely premature assassination?

Georges Melchior and Kiranine - a right couple of wrong 'uns

André intervenes when he finds Alvarez trying to abuse Papitou and she is not only grateful but very much in love… so, when Alvarez tricks the young Frenchman into following him on a trip to the wilds, Papitou follows knowing it’s a trap. Sure enough André is knocked out and left for dead only for his new friend to come to his rescue. Bravely, he sets off after Alvarez and his men who plan to steal more gold and, again with Papitou’s help, stops them.

 

The film decides we’ve spent enough time in “Monte Puebla” as a disaffected Denise – appalled at her godfather’s intentions towards her, heads out to find her true love with Marquise Severo in tow. All are reunited and Papitou learns the disappointing truth that Andre’s eyes are only for his intended. Yet, the French set off back to Paris on a passenger ship, Papitou swims out to stow away and the film enters a more comedic phase in which Baker shows her gift for physical comedy and expression. She ends up in “white face” after being powdered with flour and in the nude, washing it all off in the bath and, again, whilst her race is not specifically part of the plot it is intrinsic to the viewer’s experience. We fill in the gaps, but Josephine just beams and carries on regardless.

 

Papitou learns Christian scripture...

Things will come to a head in Paris of course, but the abiding enjoyment of the film is in Baker’s incredible energy – something she had in common with the best silent stars – as well as her post-modern charm. She’s smiling at us and not just on behalf of her character and she’s making the most of her chances… and when she dances, the room is lit up once again.

 

The Slapstick Festival continues until Sunday 7^th March and you can still catch up on Miss Baker, Clara Bow – the glorious It and rarely screened Kid Boots – Max Linder’s hilarious The Three Must-Get-There’s and much more beside.

 

Full details on the Slapstick website HERE!!

The big finish… The Chess Player (1927), Mark Fitz-Gerald with San Marco Orchestra, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto! Pordenone, Day Eight

That was the way to bow out, thousands of soldiers on horseback running at and around the camera as they charge, quick cuts of faces in battle, sword slashes, men falling… all as Edith Jehanne’s character plays the Polish anthem on her piano, envisaging a triumph as the San Marco Orchestra played Henri Rabaud’s original score at full volume.

It’s been a grand – exhausting - week and this last push lifted our tired spirits high up to the huge screen of the Teatro Verdi, fully engaging in Raymond Bernard's images and thoughts brimming over with so many highlights and wonderful conversations with a community passionately interested in communication, history and preservation. A week of shared values which showed, as the man said, how culture transcends boundaries. With attendees from across the globe, Le Giornate proves this every year as, whether from the Lower East Side, the North West, the Far East or the East End, we all want to learn more and to enquire without. Cinema Muto: it’s film for the curious…

The Chess Player is a masterclass in late-silent cinema technique that was made at the same time as Gance’s Napoleon and shares some of the scope and invention with the mobile camera and epic scale as well as innovative cutting, framing and that focus on filming thought… as Charles Dullin’s character, the clockwork inventor, faces his demise he sees the clogs of life turning and his death comes not wearing a shroud or on horseback but as an automaton… with a scythe the shape of a clock’s ticker.

Edith Jehanne et Pierre Batcheff

It’s a film of two halves, literally as well as figuratively: set in Eighteenth Century Poland after the Russian invasion of 1776, the first part covers the delicate balance between the locals and the occupying army of Tsarina Catherine II (so different from Pola Negri’s Tsarina…).

Debonair Pierre Blanchar is the pig-tailed Polish noble, Boleslas Vorowski, a master chess player and military leader who’s adopted sister Sophie Novinska (Edith Jehanne) seen as a symbol of Polish independence with her face even painted on the army’s standards. Her ward is the mysterious inventor Baron von Kempelen (Charles Dullin) a man whose genius has earned him royal favour and yet who seems to harbour deep agendas.

Sophie loves Boleslas like a brother, and loves his unlikely best friend, a Russian officer Serge Oblomoff (Pierre Batcheff) in a quite different way. But love of country will soon intervene and tear them apart. A friendly game of chess between Boleslas and the Russian Major Nicolaieff (Camille Bert) as the officer’s relax in the mess, degenerates after a Polish dancer, Wanda (Jackie Monnier), is pursued by an aggressive group of Russian offices. Boleslas goes to her rescue and starts a fight that sparks a war.

Pierre Blanchar et Edith Jehanne 

The Poles succeed in driving the Russians from Vilnius but they are eventually defeated by the latter’s superior numbers. There follows the battle mentioned at the top as the real battle is imagined by Sophie at her piano… Jehanne is just superb in this moment, emotion playing across her face as fluidly as the piano combinations as she watched and hopes in tortured isolation.

The uprising is brutally suppressed and whilst Boleslas survives the battle he is badly wounded, as the Russians search him out the Baron has an idea… it’s crazy, but it just might work. And so, it is that we take a left turn down the alley marked Georgian Steam Punk or at least the 1920’s equivalent of science fantasy.

Catherine is the Great Big Cheat!

Von Kempelen has invented many disturbing automatons, including one of himself and a platoon of sword-wielding full-size toy-soldier and he has an idea how to hide Poland’s great hope as he recuperates… inside a chess-playing automaton called the Turk. The film now shows the tour of The Turk, accompanied by von Kempelen, Sophie and Wanda, as the mechanical wonder beats all comers and travels ever closer to Germany and freedom.

But, Major Nicolaieff recognises the playing style in losing to the machine and realises that the clock-work grand master hides a secret. He persuades their host, King Stanislas, to send the Turk to the Empress in St Petersburg… out of the frying pan… and into a no-win scenario for, not only does Nicolaieff now the secret, Catherine has an even bigger secret about Sophie which could completely undermine the fight for Poland… the pace changes but the strange atmospheric and claustrophobia of the last hour, make for thrilling denouement.

Blanchar and Dullin

There was indeed a mechanical chess player known as The Turk who defeated almost all opponents from 1770 to 1854 and baffled the best minds of Europe including Napoleon Bonaparte (not to mention Benjamin Franklin). Remarkably it was only “exposed” in the 1820s... some trick but it wasn’t in Poland and Russia.

Combining the two stories together makes for a unique blend and it worked so well with the full-blooded sound of the orchestra in the Teatro’s precision crafted acoustic space. Mark Fitz-Gerald conducted and deserved every bow in this most heated finale!

In Old Kentucky (1927) with Philip Carli

Our last John M. Stahl movie provided far gentler fare and was the rare opportunity of seeing James Murray not in The Crowd, although he was in several crowds and called on to do his trademark man-at-the-edge-of-his-tether routine. This film presumable happened after The Crowd – if the stories of Vidor’s discovery of the actor are true and probably Stahl’s use of Murray would confirm the chronology given his character arc.

Murray plays Jimmy Brierly the son of a long line of proud and successful Brierly’s (Edward Martindel) whom have made themselves rich through horse breeding and racing. Murray’s girl is Nancy (Helene Costello) and both seem well-adjusted kids… But when Jimmy gets called off to the Great War, things are about to change.

He returns a shell of the man he was before, drinking and unable to function let alone live up to father’s expectations. His relationship with both sweetheart and family breaks down and he walks away just as his father’s financial difficulties threaten the family’s future. But – you’ve seen this coming haven’t you… there’s always a chance at redemption if you happen to find your old thoroughbred in a army horse sale and the horse, who performed so valiantly with Jimmy in the tranches, is a “mudder”… the day of the big, make or break race approaches and it’s a dry sunny day… if only it would rain, the old nag would have a chance?!

The film features a number of actual black actors which is always a good thing to see although there’s a lead character in black face… still, this must have been progress. The film ends with Highpockets (Stepin Fetchit… real name Lincoln Perry) agreeing to marry Lily May (Carolynne Snowden) and as the two embrace, he picks her pocket… what a rogue! Snowdon especially performs well and does the right thing for her “employers” … she deserves more than being the comic relief and Stahl does allow her character through to the drama.

The Vengeance du Sergent de Ville (1913)

 Desmet Collection Discoveries, with Nick Sosin

The next generation got the chance to shine with Donald’s son Nick Sosin performing experimental and humorous accompaniment to a series of shorts.

I especially liked The Two Little Boys Next Door (1911) was a British short with the titular lads being very naughty indeed in battling their neighbours to Nick’s quirky accompaniment of hi-register scatt and ukulele.

Also good was Mes Voisins Font Danser (1908) featured the attempts of Max Linder to get some rest avec une malle du tete! There’s a choir rehearsing upstairs and they respond to his request to “turn that noise down” by starting to dance, so much so that, naturally the roof caves in. It’s comedy chaos but it’s also The Master, as Charlie called him, being masterly.

Louis Feuillade’s The Vengeance du Sergent de Ville (1913) was also a hoot as the policeman in question is a noisy neighbour, playing his horn far too load and forcing the other tenants to try stop him and resorting to slapping a paper mache model of the copper. My advice leave it out, he ain’t worth it!

The concentrated joy of these early shorts was a timely reminder of the prevalence and popularity of the short form comedy. And it was good to see at least a few this week!

So, that’s it, I’m leaving on a jet plane… DO know when I’ll be back again though! June for Bolgna and October for Pordenone and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 38!! An excellent week and as Stephen Horne and Luigi Vitale collected the new David Gill Award for best musical collaboration – deservedly so for me  – Stephen dedicated it to all of the Giornate’s musicians, who even he is in awe of: me too and I’m not alone!

So, thank you for the music Giornate players, you have ALL brought us so much joy this week and we are loving your work.

Arrividerchi and see you all in 2019!

The long game… Monte Cristo (1929) with Costas Fotopoulos, BFI

“It’s a wonderful film, lavish… In the sense of popular cinema, it’s very impressive. The film is sumptuous. The acting is terrific. What else can I say? It’s a good movie. Go see it.” Lenny Borger

As the sun cracked the brutalist flags on the Southbank, we were inside, in the dark and immersed in a gloriously-ambitious silent adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ (and Jacques Peuchet’s) story: real locations… almost in real time (218 minutes…). It isn’t always this sunny in London but how often do you get the chance to see a live screening of Henri Fescourt’s spectacular? This was a UK premier of Lenny Borger’s labour of love restoration and consequentially unmissable if you are the strong and (stable) silent type…

Borger worked on the initial restoration for over six years and constructed a near-complete version which debuted at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival. For those of us missing this year’s SF spectacle we had something and, of course, London was hotter than the Californian coast.

There’s a fascinating interview with Borger on the SF Gate website in which he explains how he didn’t chose Monte Cristo it chose him after he watched a fragment in a Czech archive – the ends of the distribution chain - and became struck with its opulence and ambition. Now, I can well understand the spell cast by those moments, Bonaparte has Brownlow and the Comte de Monte Cristo has Borger.

Fescourt’s Monte Cristo does indeed have everything as you would expect from the director of the monolithic Les misérables? (1925) (screened last month at the Barbican) he is able to hold these vast stories and translate their key components on screen capturing plot, key sub-plots, mood and character. If, as Hitchcock said, you only need a short story to make a film, condensing massive novels into even four or six hours is some task.

A night at the opera

Fescourt does this through tight scripting, stripping out characters and sub-plots and editorial control but also by cinematic verve; using those sensational locales… and, in the second half especially some judicious on set experimentation.

There’s a sequence in the Paris Opera as high society watches ballet whilst awaiting the arrival of the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo which is chock-full of inventive lensmanship: we’re on stage with the ballerinas, sweeping from box to box as the audience looks on and sweeping through the stalls as they take in the masterful entrance of the new Comte in town. It’s planned to impress as our hero finally re-appears to begin his process of revenge: a signal that we’re entering a more action-oriented conclusion.

Pierre Batcheff takes a trip

This moment is preceded by some dreamy experimentation as the son of the man who wronged our hero, is drugged on a boat trip and wakes up in the Comte’s sumptuous but almost impressionistic palace: it takes a while for the double exposure to fade and it conveys the changed tone and confusion in the young man’s mind. It’s like a superhero movie, a dream of revenge and empowerment, not at all unlike the arrival of Steve Trevor on Themyscira as he finds the Amazons in Wonder Woman (ahem... seriously, a decent movie!).

But I’m getting way off beam. The first two hours of set up feature more conventional story-telling and purposefully so; there’s a lot to fit in and Fescourt lets his scenery do the talking as the ill-starred hero, Edmond Dantès (Jean Angelo) emerges on the good ship Pharaoh arriving in port as stand-in skipper after the ship’s captain had died. He is confirmed as Captain by the shipping company, run by Monsieur Morrel (Ernest Maupain) but this arouses the jealousy of sozzled shipmate, Caderousse (Henri Debain).

Your jealousy is killing me...

For a nice guy, Edmond makes enemies easily and as we see him greet his lover Mercédès (Lil Dagover), we also see her cousin Fernand Mondego (Gaston Modot) pull a face: he wants the one he can’t have and it’s driving him mad… Overhearing Caderousse’s drunken whinging later on Fernand decides to stir up trouble for Edmond over a stop over the ship make on the Isle of Elba. This was during the period of Napoleon’s exile and being on the wrong side of the argument could be fatal.

Of course, Edmond was merely following the orders of the late captain but, when he seeks help from the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, Monsieur de Villefort (Jean Toulout), he, realising that the trip would implicate his own father, destroys the evidence and fits Edmond up to take the fall.

de Villefort (Barrymore-look-a-like, Jean Toulout) betrays Edmond

Imprisoned for life, without trial, on the Château on the Isle d’If in the Mediterranean, things look bleak for Edmond. After six years he meets another inmate, L'abbé Faria (German actor Bernhard Goetzke) who had dug an escape tunnel that sadly only led to his cell. Faria is a wise old lag and tutors Edmond over the next eight years, telling him all he knows of science and the arts.

As Faria’s health begins to fade he tells his pal the location of a mound of treasure, hidden on eth Isle of Monte Cristo… Edmonds not sure if it’s true of not but, when fate allows him the chance to escape, he sets off to find out for sure (you’d kick yourself wouldn’t you…?).

I tell ye boy, thar be buried treasure!

Thus, we get to the action-packed second half as the newly-enriched and ennobled Comte de Monte Cristo sets about exacting his revenge on the three men who done him wrong. So much time has passed that there is now a second generation involved: Albert de Morcerf (pretty-boy Pierre Batcheff of The Chess Player), the son of Mercédès and Mondego who is now a bit of a count himself, the Comte de Morcerf, Valentine (striking Marie Glory of L’Argent fame…) daughter of a very over-promoted de Villefort and Benedetto (a completely wicked Robert Mérin) who is presumed son of Caderousse.

Next generation: Pierre Batcheff and Michèle Verly

François Rozet and Mary Glory

All play their part as the present, no matter how complicated by new loves, gets caught up with by the past! But first Edmond adopts a series of disguises to learn more and begin to entrap his prey, starting with Caderousse and his darkly-disfunctional family.

Diane Farèze, Robert Mérin & Henri Debain

Far harder will be his old rival in love who has made himslef rich through playing sides in the Turkish war - more betrayal - an the almost untouchable de Villefort who claims to believe in Justice... well, needless to say all betrayals lead to retribution and Justice only ever serves its own end. All is played out in the most satisfactory of ways... but good must wait a long time to triumph over evil.

Locked away in an impenetrable dungeon on an island with no chance of escape; betrayed completely by enemies and robbed of his true love… is it any wonder that this story continues to hold a fascination for each generation? Sometimes hope is all you have left and once in a while, it is enough to see you through.

Costas Fotopoulos was on the marathon accompaniment and never broke pace for a moment with a classical energy that matched the story’s period of origin as well as its temperament. I particularly liked some of the romantic flourishes towards the film’s conclusion and the grandeur of the playing as Edmond headed for his cruel incarceration in the Chateau d’If.

I really hope this gets the digital release it deserves along with the director’s Les Miserables: two films that show just the strength-in-depth of French silent cinema!

Really free… Feu Mathias Pascal (1925)

Can freedom truly exist without responsibility? My politics teacher would have explained the difference between freedom and licence: you need to have some checks and balances otherwise there is nothing to stop half of us being oppressed by the other’s desire to do as they wilt.

The main character in Feu Mathias Pascal (The Late Matthias Pascal) is obsessed with the idea of liberty but ultimately finds it limits his freedom to act not so much as anyone else’s. Mathias Pascal spends long hours in his room reading about liberty and theorising… he still lives with his mother and all the while he is stuck in his studies he is failing to protect her estate and her liberty.

Adapted from Luigi Pirandello's 1902 novel Il fu Mattia Pascal by its director, Marcel L'Herbier, Feu Mathias Pascal is a fable filmed against stunning backdrops in San Gimignano, Monte Carlo and Rome. Not many silent directors used location as well as L’Herbier: just check out L’Alhambra in Eldorado…

Michel Simon and Ivan Mosjoukine

The Pascal’s live in the picturesque and many-towered town of Miragno (imagine a smaller version of Bolgna in its heyday…) and have fallen on hard times. The widowed Madame Pascal (Marthe Mellot) is tricked into selling her property for a fraction of its real worth by her wicked attorney and they downsize...

Life takes an unexpected turn as Mathias (the magnetic Ivan Mosjoukine) is persuaded by a love-sick friend Jérôme Pomino (Michel Simon), to tell the object of the latter’s desire, Romilde (Marcelle Pradot), of his affection… But, as readers of Cyrano will know, this can be a potentially hazardous route and thus it proves as Mathias and Romilde (not Roxanne) find that they are the ones in love…

Ivan Mosjoukine and Marcelle Pradot

They marry and soon have a baby in their modest quarters which are shared by Romilde’s harridan of a mother who is gradually recreating herself in her daughter in spite of their seemingly tenuous genetic connections.

Mathias is thus dragged from thoughts of soaring liberty down to the earthy requirements of board and lodging. He takes up a job as an assistant librarian in a former church packed with piles of dust-coated literature, stacked to the rafters and constantly nibbled at by rats… The head librarian sits high above absorbed in his studies. He leaves his new assistant to it and Mathias devises an elaborate mechanism for herding the rats through use of cats tied to carefully measured strings… The set is enormous and expressive: were you watching Tim Burton?

Insert mother-in-law joke here...

It’s one of many light touches in a film that deals in both sides of the music of chance… Mathias’s unhappy home life is soon an irrelevance as his mother becomes seriously ill and, as she calls out to see her grand-daughter one last time, the child too succumbs to life threatening disease.

Romilde and her mother neglect to tell Mathias of his mother’s request and by the time he finds out it is almost too late for both gran and granddaughter: even so in his hysteria of grief he brings the two together one last time…

Marthe Mellot

The story turns now as Mathias travels away to Monte Carlo in order to recuperate… he finds his way to the Casino and, as luck would have it, wins a fortune in the casino. Then, in a moment resembling a Paul Auster narrative, he reads that he is believed dead after a man’s body was identified as him back home: everyone believing him the victim of his grief.

He is elated: now he can be truly free no money or identity worries and he can be whoever he wants to be. He heads off to Rome where he wanders the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and through a Forum yet to be encroached by Il Duce’s arrogant architecture. He spies an exceptionally pretty girl, Adrienne Paléari (Lois Moran, who beguiled F Scott Fitgerald and many others…) and follows her across Rome to her father’s apartment block.

Lois Moran

So far, so free and yet… Mathias discovers that without a passport and without proof of his identify, he cannot rent a room in a hotel, even though he could afford it many times over.

He finds it easier to rent a room from Adrienne’s father and joins the odd community in what look like the most spacious rooms in Rome. The “dead” man is surprised to find that so many of the lodgers are interested in re-incarnation and the practice of séances used to try re-connect with those on the other side.

There’s an obvious poignancy in the “late” Mathias needing to reconnect with himself but this necromancy is also the plot device driving the remainder of the tale. There’s a fraudulent “archaeologist” Terence Papiano (Jean Hervé) who controls his neighbours lives through the promptings of the dead, with the aid of his brother Scipion (Pierre Batcheff - he of Napoleon, The Chess Player, Un Chien Andalou etc…) under cover of the dark.

Pierre Batcheff

Terence has persuaded Adrienne’s father that his dead relatives believe that she should marry him and it seems that nothing will stand in his way. But he pushes his luck too far when brother Scipion robs Mathias during one performance… Mathias realises that he cannot go to the police as he has no identity… returning to the house though he chances his arm by denying that a robbery has taken place, knowing that Terence will realise that his game is up. Thus compromised the trickster has no option but to follow Mathias’ suggestion that he take his brother on an extended vacation…well away from Rome.

Mathias knows that he must regain his identity in order to pursue his love for Adrienne… but he must also return home to settle his account with his wife, friends and the man who robbed his mother: things he can only achieve as himself, emboldened by the realisation that there is no place like your own face…

Les deux Pascal

Feu Mathias Pascal clocks in at just under three hours and feels like an adaptation of a book with its multiple locations and characters, but it is full of invention from L’Herbier and his cast. As well as the exceptional location sequences, the director inserts a number of clever dream sequences showing Mathias encountering himself and wrestling with his conflicted imagination.

Of course, Mosjoukine revels in the drama and is so charismatically intense it’s sometimes difficult to watch the other performers. He had unusual features and a strangely feline countenance set off against huge expressive blue/grey eyes that allowed him to turn his emotional focus at will. It was rumoured that he was bought to Hollywood as a replacement for Valentino but, whilst he has the charisma and acting skill, he conveys a lot more…under-current than the former.

Ivan Mosjoukine

He displays great range and star power in this film given his character’s story arc and the amount of time he has on screen. One of many Russian émigrés to France after the revolution, Mosjoukine directed as well as acted and I shall certainly be seeking out his other films for Albatross specifically Flicker Alley’s recent box set – temptingly available direct.

I watched their Blu-Ray of Feu Mathias Pascal which has no extras save for a brief booklet…but it doesn’t really need anything to add to what is a magnificent restoration of one of the most adventurous French films of the twenties although I should give special mention to Timothy Brock’s excellent new score which trips alongside this dreamy tale with emotional precision.

The film was perhaps more formally disciplined and less experimental than his earlier works such as Eldorado and L’Inhumaine and was unsurprisingly L’Herbier’s most successful release at the time, also going on to play well abroad, where it continues to impress to this day.

Strange corridors...