Sadie’s hard rain… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Seven

This was always going to be Gloria Swanson’s day with a stunning presentation of one of her landmark and most-influential films but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of action of this fine festive Friday.

 

The day started with more evidence, as it were needed, that Italia Almirante Manzini is the most under-rated diva in Italian silent film with a story as operatic as they come and daft in the stylish way only Italy can get away with. La Statua di Carne (1921). Giornate cover girl Manzini plays two roles a chaste florist Maria and a worldly, outgoing singer called Neomi Keller which is nearly weird as, they are doppelgangers and I’ve just started reading a book on this very subject by Naomi Klein*, who has so often been confused with the lunatic conspiracy theorist and bad historian, Naomi Woolf.

 

Traditionally doppelgangers spell trouble and in this story, they are in the mind of Maria’s grieving lover, Count Paul Santarosa (Lido Manetti) much as the Kim Novaks are on Jimmy Stewart’s in Vertigo: are we seeing what Paul sees or is there more to this than it might appear? Based on Teobaldo Ciconi’s 1862 play, inspired by his passion for actress Celestina De Martini Peracchi, it had been adapted before and some critics found it dated in 1921 although there seems to have been general praise for the production and Manzini’s dual performance. Vate La Pesca in La Rivista Cinematografica (Dec ’21) thought she acted “… too proudly for the characters to appear at their fullest…” and yet his colleague in the same publication, Aurelia Spada raved about her “carnal sexuality” and rich, “masterful metamorphoses”.

 

India Almirante Manzini

There’s good support from Alfonso Cassini as Paul’s good-hearted best pal Marquis Chatonnet as well as Bianca Renieri as Martha who is Maria’s BFF and marries the Marquis. They all meet when Maria and her friends find the two nobles the worst for wear and assume that their down and outs in need of some hot food. The lads like being liked for just who they are and play along although their secret is eventually out much to Martha’s delight as she immediately asks Chatonnet to marry her and he agrees!

 

The wit of the first half drops away as Maria’s congenital frailty leads to her death and Paul’s falling into the deepest well of mourning. Until he is dragged along to the theatre to meet Neomi and is struck by her remarkable similarity to the woman he mourns. For a while he worships this living statue memorialising his love but observed and observer are bound to have feelings outside of the moribund…

 

The costumes are outstanding, and the drama is rich with Daan van den Hurk providing mesmerising accompaniment.

 

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day: Bird’s Eye View of George Street, Sydney, NSW (AU 1906) just wins out over Oscar Lahousen de Vevremont’s elegant Eine Fahrt Mit Der Straßenbahn Durch Klagenfurt (AT 1926). There’s more risk involved in providing a bird’s eye view especially in the middle of Sydney in a country known for its dangerous fauna.

 

Weimar Uncensored: Genuine (DE 1920)

I’ve had a 43-minute incomplete copy of this as an extra on Eureka’s Caligari Blu-ray but this was an 83 minute reconstruction based on the French version which had some significant changes from the original German one – the Third French Republic still censored films. Directed by Robert Wiene it has the look of his other film, and both meet Lotte Eisner’s strict criteria for Expressionist films:

 

·       Focus on Inner Emotions rather than external reality

·       Visual Distortions: exaggerated sets and lighting create a surreal atmosphere

·       Hyper-Expressive Performances – oh my yes!

 

Genuine was to be another “Stilfilm” aimed at making the same success as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with the same creative team and with some new, perhaps too many, ideas. Fern Andra is the titular character in her first staring role and whilst she creates an intriguing and disturbing possible witch, temptress/trapped object of desire, she’s not as well formed a character as Cesare in Caligari.

 

She is bought at a slave market and dressed in outlandish clothing in a locked room where she toys with the men brought to see her by the mysterious Lord Melo (Ernst Gronau). Is it an experiment or a ritual or is it even real? The French censors found the original version too much and insisted on a framing sequence in which Percy Melo (Harald Paulsen) who has painted the image of a high priestess named Genuine, then falls asleep and dreams the whole thing.

 

Be that as it may, once released Genuine continued to manipulate men’s baser feelings and the poor confused things seem to have had trouble assimilating the narrative… A film ripe for re-evaluation.

 

“Every evening at the Marmor-Haus, tempers clash rather vigorously – some boo, others even applaud, all in dispute over the merit or demerit of a work that in my eyes is nothing more than an interesting poisonous plant.” 

Fritz Olimsky, Berliner Börsenzeitung (05.08.1920)

  

Mauro Colombis on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic and the mystery, genuinely atmospheric. Not a dream.

 

Sitcom: Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew. Programme 2

 

Anyone who doesn’t just love this comedy couple by now needs to see their doctor as there is so much warmth in their relationship as Sid improvises making second wife Lucille laugh out of character but she’s not the only one as the entire cast seems to be having a ball. By Might of His Right (1915) has Sid see off his annoying Harvard educated brother-in-law by faking boxing skills whilst His Wife Knew All About it (1916) sees him dating their new cook to help enliven her social life: his friends see and jump to all the wrong conclusions egged on by Lucille!

 

It's the comedy of relationships – not just the central one – and Sid’s gags are top notch. Sadly, there are very few of these films in existence partly because he died in 1919 aged only 55. He had the gift alright, and I hope more people now get to see it!

 

Philip Carli was absolutely the man for this job and accompanied as if he was sat in the same room as the Drews! He was, of course, dressed for the occasion!

Countess Marguerita de Cippico on the left and right...

 

Make war no more: I’d seen Peace on the Western Front (GB 1930) at this year’s British Silent Film Symposium and was delighted to see it again. It’s a mix of recreated live dialogue from the IWM’s Toby Haggith and Clare Watson along with Stephen Horne’s beautiful accompaniment, and two sound discs (out of four) one of which was recently uncovered by dogged silent film researcher and writer Brent Reid. It’s a haunting film that has Moore Marriot’s old soldier explaining what the Great War was like to his grandson as the youngster has been playing with his toy soldiers.

 

It features footage from the front as it was in 1930, still very dangerous even if oddly quiet, as well as scenes of the reconstructed towns and cities of the various battles. As a slice of post-war life, it is incredibly poignant and as a lesson in history it is deadly serious as some modern politicians seem to view war in ways that would have been very familiar to Edwardian monarch states… the gap between politicians and humanity is growing.

 

A lighter look at the war was provided by Léonce Perret’s Lest We Forget (US 1918) which was released in January 1918 with the aim of reminding the US just how close they are to France – two great democracies who became republics at around the same time. The film starred and was produced by British actor Rita Jolivet also known as the Countess Marguerita de Cippico. She is great in the film as an all-action heroine would dances repeatedly with death, has luck and most importantly agency easily besting her male foes and, in the end, dramatically despatching the main baddy. Compared with her, the male lead playing her sweetheart Harry, Hamilton Revelle was made more for comedy.

 

This may have been about US /French goodwill, but Rita smuggled in a feminist main character!

 

Neil Brand did his patriotic duty with music of steadfast composition and firm resolve even as the Lusitania sank with Rita onboard…

 

A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915)

 

The Art of the Benshi:

 

Time for silent film to get a bit shouty and we were back with the benshi for a cartoon about a snake that had broken in half Chongire Hebi (1930) and mysterious sea gods in Umi No Kyuden (1930). The main feature was A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915) which is astonishingly old for a Japanese silent and this is evident in the limited technique involved in a very wordy story about weddings and quests featuring an all-male cast. For completists only as the record reviewers sometimes say about early releases from famous groups but this was history on screen and on stage too.

 

Benshi: Kataoka Ichirō, Ōmori Kumiko, Yamauchi Nanako

Accompaniment: Katada Kisayo (percussion), Kiyomoto Nobuakira (shamisen)

 

 

Some more German Pola: Das Martyrium (1920), is the precious last 20-odd minutes of Paul Ludwig Stein’s film featuring a lot of Negri action after she discovers that her late husband had left her inheritance only if she lives and sleeps in the room where he died, all painted grey and with bare lighting illuminating his portraits on each wall… a gothic nightmare and she plays it well.

 

 

Gloria Swanson and Raoul Walsh 

The Future is Now: Sadie Thompson (US 1928)

 

This cracking upgraded restoration* seems to sit outside of time and space and I kept on thinking that this just couldn’t have been a 1928 film: it felt like a pre-code as it eventually became with Joan Crawford and Rain. The battle between Lionel Barrymore’s born-again Christian Alfred Davidson and Sadie (Swanson) the former sex worker looking for redemption and a new start, is an epic one that brings in questions about criminality, religion and the nature of faith. Davidson – hard as he tries is only offering a get-out and it’s loaded with caveats that are ultimately self-serving. He bullies Sadie into “converting” even though it’s against her best interests to return to San Francisco to pay her penance in jail. He’s physically and intellectually dominating her no matter how strong she thinks she is.

 

The standard line of the time would have meant Sadie taking her medicine and ignoring her chances with Sergeant Timothy O'Hara (Raoul Walsh – who also directs) in the promised land of Australia but the film doesn’t take the easy way out. What our instincts are screaming out about Davidson the longer this Christian cat and satanic mouse game is played, turn out to be true and it’s to the film’s credit that it takes its audience right to the wire and knows we’ll work out the subtext.

 

As Pamela Hutchinson writes in her recent book on The Curse of Queen Kelly, Swanson had to fight to make this film with some studios traying to prevent her, but she was right, and it was one of her biggest successes. At just 28 she’d made a film that pointed to the future and it’s just a shame that Queen Kelly didn’t allow her to move even further… but you can find out all about that in the book and watch the reconstructed film.

 

Gloria Swanson has great hair in this film and sets the style in all ways for the coming decade – and all because she wanted to!

 

The accompaniment from Meg Morley was also as fierce and nuanced as Swanson with so much texture and depth. There are long sections of the performers engaged in intense but wordless debate and to be able to ride alongside with the same force of invention is quite something for a 98-minute film! Go, you good thing!

 

Simply one of the best things we’ve heard and seen all week!

 

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Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore

*The current copy of Sadie Thompson is a 4K upgrade of the restoration originally produced by Dennis Doros for Kino Lorber in 1987, and it is from this film that the image for the Giornate 2026 poster is taken.

Pola, Asta and Colleen... Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Two

Pola Negri – Asta from Poland

Buffalo Bill…

She is a star in our homeland

Buffalo Bill…

 

Warsaw cabaret song circa 1917

Before Germany, before Hollywood, her fellow Poles were already comparing Pola Negri with the Danish superstar Asta Nielsen and you can see just why in Bestia aka The Polish Dancer (1917) in which she does an even raunchier version of the Apache Dance featured by Asta in her breakout success, Afgrunden (1910). Bestia is the oldest surviving Pola Negri film but it’s also the only survivor of her Polish films made from 1914 to 1917 when she moved to Berlin to appear in a German revival of Max Reinhardt's theatre production of Sumurun – having already been in a successful Polish run of this play in 1913. In Berlin she met Ernst Lubitsch, and the rest is history but even in Warsaw, we can already see the actor/dancer’s star power and her ability to emote as if everyone is looking and she just doesn’t care.

Pola plays Pola Basznikow, a young woman who enjoys the party life much to the annoyance of her father who paces around in a fury as Pola dances and drinks with friends. After a blazing row with her father, Pola decides to leave and enlists the help of her friend Dymitr help. The couple stay at an hotel run by his untrustworthy friends and, sensing they’ll be looking for her to pay her way, she “borrows” Dymitr’s money and heads off on her own to Warsaw leaving the young man with vengeance filling in his heart and an empty wallet. He swears revenge.

The Polish dancers

In the big city she is soon spotted and makes her way on stage becoming involved with rich married men with too much money and not enough restraint. She’s living la Vida Loco but what goes up must come down in the language of most film of this time.

Pola is also showing her increasing screen impact and deathly side-eye in the recently rediscovered Die Marchesa D’Armiani (DE 1920) directed by Alfred Halm. Only the first half of the film survives but it’s enough to show her on top form as Assunta, the titular Marchesa who torments and seduces Lothar von Raff (Fritz Schulz) the son of the police chief who ruined her mother’s life as part of a plan to get revenge. This sins of the parents are passed onto these helpless offspring and whatever cruelty Assunta can devise we know there’s worse to come… at least we do if we read Jay Weissberg’s essay in the Catalogue!

John Sweeney accompanied with melding music and mood in ways that seem almost unconscious but are very deliberate. Talent and unending practice moves his hands along with Pola’s eyes, dance and darkening heart…

 

You might think that the arrival of Pola, Nazimova and Garbo from the decadent old countries might have signalled the end of The Griffith Girls and a certain type of childlike women whose stories were usually about love and not sex. You might think that… but never right off the Irish! Colleen Moore – who had an Irish Granny (like most of us) was the evening star featuring in Her Wild Oat (1927) screening as part of the Marshall Neilan strand.

Moore had been one of Griffith stars and whilst she lacked the looks of some, the acting skills of others (maybe?), she was overloaded with charm and pure pep! It is not possible to watch Colleen Moore and not fall in love with her characters: she has depth and human frailty that wins you over every time and yet she’s never mawkish or phoney. This is a magical skill and one that enables even run of the mill narratives to succeed.

Here she plays Mary Lou Smith, a regular working girl who runs a low-margin street stall selling coffee and eats to help the city keep on moving. It was her second film with Neilan after the under-rated Dinty (1920) and despite the appearance of a low budget, he ups the comedy and let’s her do the rest as the appearance on night of Philip Latour a handsome young man with overalls and no money (Larry Kent) offers her the hope of love and maybe more if she only knew? 

There’s good support form Gwen Lee as her sassy, steadfast friend Daisy and Hallam Cooley as her journalist pal Tommy who almost gets her into too much of a “story”. It’s slight but snappy and there’s one of the best scenes of dialogue between two dogs at the end: these people knew exactly what they were doing – a hit!!

Today’s stunning rail journeys continued with New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 1 (1899!!) directed by James H. White (probably) and which showed the innards of this magnificent construct, opened in opened on May 24, 1883, and traversed by me on foot in 1987… There’s something about the optimism of travel especially when it celebrates engineering accomplishments. We need more of these films!

The evening finished off with a couple of comedy shorts written and directed by Neilan and proved how repetitive and coarse the genre could be no matter the undoubted skills involved. The Reformation of Ham (1914) featured and extended scrap between Ham and Shorty two ornery shipmates whilst Love, Oil & Grease (1914) actually had a plot but again featured an extended battle between Ham and his other buddy, Bud which was largely irrelevant to the fraternal battle between two siblings to out compete each other’s car company.

Donald Sosin played throughout the evening and deserves some kind of medal!

And engineering marvel that is still in use...

Earlier in the day there was more stunning phantom train riding with Schwebebahn (DE 1902) showing the Single-Rail Hanging Railway, System of Eugen Langen, named after its inventor, Eugen Langen which is in Wuppertal, in western Germany and is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. As it is it looks like the most made-up AI steam punk but no, it’s real and it’s a marvel’

Next a Phantom Film in the form of a couple of short fragments of FW Murnau’s otherwise lost film Satanas (DE 1920) which looked very louche and decadent with Fritz Kortner being “cuddled” by Sadjah Gezza in three takes? and Conrad Veidt at his most protean in a silver wig that would become fashionable for 50 more years. We need more, of course we do!

Paul Rehkopf is Teufel!

Talk of The Devil, you wait ages for a Weimar film in which he features and then, like trains and trams, two arrive at almost the same time. So it was that we experienced Die Teufelskirche (DE 1919?) a fever dream of satanic visitation set in a rural community (literally so for the man in Seat Funf in the front row of the 2^nd balcony…). Adapted by Adolf Paul from his 1906 play  of the same name, the story had focused on transgressive themes of free love, sexual expression and the hypocrisy of bourgeoise morality, the film still has trace elements of this daring agenda.

The Devil enters a small village disguised as a tinker aiming to make himself useful. He meets a farmer's wife, Frau Ane (Agnes Straub looking very much the part), and playing on her longing for a child strikes a deal with her in exchange for her wish for motherhood to come true. As part of this unholy bargain she must pass his message onto the community and this, naturally involves her seducing the priest (Hans Mierendorff) who builds a new church dedicated to the fallen one after his church is devoured by flames. Ane's cottage is also consumed much to her husband's despair... this Tinker is only using their misery to undermine their fragile order. Think of him like modern social media, or Fox News...

Directed by Hans Mierendorff it may or may not be all a dream but, as always, The Devil is in the details. The Devil also has all the best tunes and Günter Buchwald, on piano and fiddle _ the Devil’s favourite strings! and Frank Bockius on percussion had a great time with this: think Hellzapoppin without so much swing!

There was also time to marvel once again at the imagination and craftsmanship of Dave Fleischer’s animations with three films featuring Koko the Clown and his pal  - Koko’s Catch (1928). Koko’s Klock (1927) and Koko’s Tattoo (1928) – it’s a cat which is, of course a bad idea when everything drawn comes to life and moves!

The accompaniment was really something special with the Orchestra della Scuola di Musica Città di Cordenons and Ensemble Armonia combining to give a modern child’s musical view of these eternally interesting ‘toons. Good job all round kids and grown-ups of all ages!

Agnes Straub breaks several deadly sins in mere moments

The most affecting parts of the schedule came from “Female Madness” part of a strand curated by Pordenone’s Collegium alumni and which achieved the difficult task of addressing this subject in an historical way and using works of documentary and fiction to show how the subject was treated. Feminism and Foucault come to minds in terms of how these prime sources provide a measure of our compassion and understanding then and now.

The medical films of Vincenzo Neri (1908-28) as well as La Pitié-Salpêtrière University hospital footage showed people with various muscular ticks and stims – one can only guess at the cause and yet the filmmakers hoped to use the film as an aid to diagnosis. My daughter works in advancing Assistive Technology and this is an early form of a much larger visual discipline now. There was a character screen test for actor Eve Fracis from Alberto Cavalcanti and Jacques de Baroncelli which bridged the gap between the medical and the performative. The audience were unsure and not relaxed enough to clap in the usual way.

Madcap Asta

It was remarkable programming as we moved in to Germaine Dulac’s ÂMES DE FOUS (FR 1918), Louis Feuillade’s LE VIOLON (FR 1908), Max Mack’s ZWEIMAL GELEBT (DE 1912) and then Edmund Edel’s DAS VERSUCHSKANINCHEN (DE 1917) for which the words “zany” or “madcap” may have been invented. The Guinea Pig (Das Versuchskaninchen) finds Asta Neilsen, who was 32, playing a teenager called Jesta who is low on attention span and high on energy constantly frustrating her father (Alfred Kuehne) and coming between him and his fiancée. Amazingly, Jesta has a love of her own, played by Fred Immler who seems normal enough but clearly likes her sense of humour.

Tiring of been worn down by his daughter’s constant comedy, Dad decides to send her off to a strict school but, due to various mishaps, she ends up at a lunatic asylum where the doctor quickly diagnoses insanity and proceeds to try and treat her using the modern of methods including electric shock treatment and a padded cell. It’s largely not funny anymore but still interesting to see Asta playing in a weird kind of Mary Pickford role and one that is uncomfortable in an age when we are still coming to terms with mental disabilities.

Sometimes the visuals speak so loudly it’s hard to do anything other than watch and Daan van den Hurk’s piano accompaniment was spot on.

The programmers say in the notes: “… we hope these film present a thought-provoking set of representations that demystify how silent cinema shaped, and was shaped by, ideas about women and madness that emerged at the intersection of reality and fiction.”

Seif Abdo, Daniel Lawrence Aufmann, Ellen Cleary, Hugo Ljungback and Matteo Masi

 

I missed THE SECOND SINO-JAPANESE WAR IN TOY FILMS  DCP, 102'23" with Günter Buchwald on piano accompaniment!

 

Asta is so meta in Bestia... her room full of her posters!

Primal Pola… Bestia (The Polish Dancer) (1917), FINA Blu-ray box

Pola Negri – Asta from Poland

Buffalo Bill…

She is a star in our homeland

Buffalo Bill…

Warsaw cabaret song circa 1917

 

This is the oldest surviving Pola Negri film but it’s also the only survivor of her Polish films made from 1914 to 1917 when she moved to Berlin to appear as the dancing girl in a German revival of Max Reinhardt's theatre production of Sumurun – she’d also been in a successful Polish run of this play in 1913 which got her noticed by Warsaw’s Sfinks film company. During the German production, she met Ernst Lubitsch, who would, of course, later direct her, and Swedish legend Jenny Hasselqvist, in a film version of that play, released in 1920 but, before that was Die Augen der Mumie Ma (1918), Carmen (1918) followed by Madame DuBarry aka, in the USA, Passion (1919) which was an international hit and opened the door even in America. A new wave of European sexual sophistication was about to blast past the Griffith Girls and their dated innocence, and, as it always does, Hollywood started acquiring as much Germanic talent as it could.

In 1917 it’s worth pointing out, especially after watching the excellent season of Jerzy Skolimowski films at the BFI and on their new Blu-Ray/DVD set, that Poland was, as ever, in political flux and divided between Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Russian Empire. Sfinks was the pioneering production company and was able to gain success through distribution to the Russian market. It’s no coincidence that Bestia, as directed by Aleksander Hertz – founder of Sfinks – has a similar style to Russian films of say Yevgeni Bauer and other pre-Revolutionary filmmakers, with largely static cameras capturing intensely well-choreographed players using every inch of the performance space in rich and layered sets.

Pola's Apache dance

Hertz was one of those who recognised the hit potential of Asta Nielsen in the Danish Afgrunden (1910) and their distribution of that film and that star to the Russian market, made enough for the company to start making its own films. Again, it’s no co-incidence at all, that Pola performs an Apache dance very similar to Asta’s, wrapping herself even more provocatively around her cowboy; a trained dancer unlike Die Asta also less of an actor perhaps but more of a natural Earth spirit. In Bestia she repeats a similar attempt to produce a Polish Asta in Slave to Her Senses (1914), sadly now lost.

Her acting was mainly based on the best example of the time, which was Asta Nielsen… We were imitating her characterisation. Big, black, boldly accentuated eyes, very pale face and lips – big, red and pouty. The acting technique was overloaded with expressive gesticulations which at the time was supposed to replace the dynamic of spoken words. Halina Bruczówna, fellow Sfinks’ star speaking in 1936.

Pola was just 19 when she filmed Bestia probably in the autumn of 1916 and the originally named Barbara Apolonia Chalupec, had already lived a lot of life, the daughter of an activist father who had fought against both Austria Hungary and the Russians, being sent to Siberia and costing the family almost everything as her mother struggled as a cook to bring her up. Ill health stopped her ballet career in her teens but she lied about her age to get into the Academy of Dramatic Arts where she obviously excelled at turning her lived experience into dramatic gold dust.

Ain't no party like a Pola party!

That this sole survivor of the actor’s early period survives at all is due to an American lawyer Jesse A. Levinson, who bought copies of Pola’s Polish films in the hope of capitalising on her success in his home country. He replaced the titles with new one in English and took out all references to the original filmmakers claiming the film as his own which whilst fraudulent, enabled it to survive whilst European chaos ended up in the destruction of most Polish films of this period. It’s hard to know what other editing decisions were made but as the EYE’s Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi points out in the fab booklet accompanying this release, it’s likely that the Apache dance may have had some of the more risqué moments excised.

What we see in this superb restoration from the Polish National Film Archive – Audio-visual Institute (FINA) is almost complete though at some 64 minutes long and is a richly satisfying example of a pure Pola performance, the Polish Asta indeed. Premiered in 2018, the institute have released a Blu-ray which I bought from the Cineteca Bologna which is a sumptuous box set complete with extras and a 58-page booklet in Polish and English.

Pola is electric throughout as if instinctively understanding the nascent art of film acting helped, as noted above, by the example set by Asta but there’s a difference between the two that does make the Pole present as more of herself. She’s Lubitsch’s wildcat already, sexy, witty, confident and with the biggest, blackest eyes in silent cinema. She’s more than able to catch and maintain our attention though joyful febrility and the feeling that she knows you’re looking and just why; well before Hitchcock she made voyeurs of us all. She improved as an actress without doubt but there’s few as explosively nuanced and more straightforwardly erotic humans ever been seen on screen.

Pola's room, complete with self-referential banners and photographs

Gathering myself I notice there’s a plot in which Pola plays Pola Basznikow, a young woman who enjoys the party life much to the annoyance of her father who paces around in a fury as Pola dances and drinks with friends. She nearly causes a fight between two competing males, before heading off with Dymitr (Jan Pawłowski) and from there to home. After a blazing row with her father, Pola decides to leave and enlists Dymitr’s help and finances to do it. The couple stay at an hotel run by untrustworthy friends of Dymitr and, sensing they’ll be looking for her to pay her way, she “borrows” Dymitr’s money and heads off on her own to Warsaw leaving the young man with vengeance filling in his heart and his empty wallet.

In the big city Pola soon gets noticed… and, after getting a job modelling hats, gets asked out by a customer who takes her to the ballet where she’s transfixed by the dancer on stage. Pola starts taking lessons herself and we switch forward to her as a rising star at the Cabaret Ardent. This is one of those skilfully constricted scenes within the frame of the static camera, customers sat at a table up front, tables in the middle ground and Pola on stage at the right. The scene shifts as the camera focuses on her dancing and the appreciation of those foregrounded customers one of whom is the playboy Aleksy (Witold Kuncewicz), smitten with what he has just seen but very much married to his wife Sonia (Maria Dulęba) with a daughter to prove it.

Pola knows none of this and begins an affair with Aleksy who furnishes her with an apartment and many fine dresses – the haute couture is delicious as it often is in films of this decade – fashion wasn’t democratised until the twenties but there was plenty of stunning design at play for the well to do. Alesky’s homelife is given sufficient attention to build up his conflicted stress and whilst this is a classic love triangle – with all the angles wresting on Alesky the Cheat – there’s enough to guarantee heartbreak.

And all the while, jilted and de-funded Dymitr has also made it to the city and is working as a waiter at the Cafe de Paris… 

Pola drives Aleksy mad but he's pretty dumb anyway

The restoration comes with a new score from film composer Włodek Pawlik whose jazzy score aims to reach across the century and to “…reflect the meaning of emotions and what is most important in real life and in the film… permanent values regardless of technology and time.” There are some funky surprises in the score which, the more I listened the more I grew accustomed to… heck, there’s plenty of ways to go wrong with a silent score but this is Pawlik’s view and it does settle down to a pleasingly upbeat groove with the film’s lovely visuals and Hertz’s maximisation of the drama and minimisation of the fuss: things go as they must but he makes sure we enjoy it for as long as possible. No spoilers mind…

Bestia is definitely worth seeking out to add to your Pola collection or indeed any collection of early film. It’s quite hard to find online, there’s someone selling copies on eBay but you can order from this Polish site if you can navigate the language.

Humanising history... Madame Dubarry (1919), with John Sweeney, BFI Weimar Cinema

“I am an actor, and if I don’t play this part, I’m through with films! If I can’t play parts that I don’t look like, then I shouldn’t even be on the stage – I chose the wrong profession!”

Thus argued noted stage actor Emil Jannings on being told that he didn’t look regal enough to play King Louis XV in Ernst Lubitsch’s new film; four years later he would play the dilapidated doorman in The Last Laugh and he was, of course, eminently capable of playing the King. Lubitsch was so convinced he expanded the role and offered Jannings more work.

Made just a year after the Great War ended, Madame Dubarry was a lavish costume drama that was the most expensive film yet made in Germany. It led to director Ernst Lubitsch being labelled as the German Griffith and there are certainly parts of the film that show a debt. It's also possible that Orphans of the Storm – made three years later - was in part a response from the master to the younger man's smooth story-telling, controlled crowd scenes and subject matter. Lubitsch was more interested than DWG in “humanised” history, rather than simply finding identifiable emblems of “good or bad”… He concentrated on the impact on these events of a woman who barely comprehended her role in change, let alone the reaction she eventually faced.

Emil Jannings being "typically protean..."

There’s also not too much in common between Lillian Gish and Pola Negri... with the latter evincing an earthy humanity that convinces you that this humble seamstress could indeed earn the affection of aristocrats and Kings. In the US, the film was sold as her star vehicle, with little mention of its German origins: Polish star, “French story”.

Pola plays Jeanne Vaubernier a wild and carefree soul almost unconscious of her effect on men but with a pragmatic ambition driven by opportunism more than any political programme. She has a lover, Armand De Foix (an earnest Harry Liedtke) but sets her sights on any man of social standing who can offer her more. Thus, does she make her way in society first through the influential Don Diego then Le Comte Jean Dubarry and finally on to King Louis XV and the protean Emil. Jannings is measurably larger than life and seems to nailed the art of film acting very quickly, filling the screen with just the right amount of beaming charm along with the self-confident casual power that inhabits all the best monarchs.

A Lubitsch touch... the curtain reveals the opportunities now opening...

The pace of the story is so fast you wonder how things are going to develop beyond this point but life and French politics begin to overtake Jeanne. She gets the king to prevent Armand's execution and he becomes a member of the royal guard. At the same time she comes into range of the scheming Minister Choiseul (another great turn from Reinhold Schünzel) who hopes to advance his sister's position with the king. Meanwhile, France is a tinderbox of festering resentment at unfair taxes, food shortages and negligent aristocracy.

Jeanne and Armand meet and he is astonished to learn that she is the hated Dubarry; symbol of royal indifference and whimsy. "It is easy to forgive, " he says, "...but not to forget." Nevertheless, he gives her one last chance as he joins a band of proto-revolutionaries led by his friend Paillet. The situation is stirred up by both sides and Jeanne blows her chance by ordering Paillet's arrest. She is running out of friends and increasingly dependent on the King's favour. But, as his health begins to fade, the revolution looks ever more certain.

The action explodes in the last half an hour of the film and, having been focused on the individuals, the view is dramatically widened to show the revolt in the streets and the desperate battle of the citizenship against the army. As aristos hang from the lampposts, Jeanne is betrayed and sentenced to death: no one gets out of here alive.

Lubitsch shows much subtlety in focusing on character in telling this epic tale. There's a superb moment when Jeanne first arrives at Don Diego's house, her first taste of upper class living, as the curtain behind her pulls away to reveal the opulence of his cabinet. This shows the gap between the lives of the ordinary people and the nobles most effectively; why shouldn't Jeanne want to be part of this?

The director used over 2000 extras, and according to Herman G Weinberg in The Lubitsch Touch: a critical study (1977), he succeeds by making them act like individuals rather than a mindless mob… each one desperate for food, justice and crude revenge!

Motivated mob...

Madame Dubarry feels less melodramatic than an American film of the same period might have been and it’s more conflicted: you can feel sympathy for Jeanne without necessarily condoning her actions - she's not a pure white heroine by any means but she's true to herself even though she can't resist temptation. Try that one on for size Lil… there’s a worldly complexity in Negri’s approach that seems to come naturally and there’s an humour and charm working to humanise her selfishness.

Pola simply brings great energy to the role and, whilst there's the odd moment when she over-reaches, she's mostly naturalistic with a smile of pure unfettered joy. It's her innocent surprise at the benefits her looks bring that ultimately makes her likable. In the end you want her to be given one more chance even if the revolution demands that she must be punished.

One of Lubitsch’s best early dramas and told with a deftness that clearly got him noticed in Hollywood. As for Emil… he might had been a King but even he didn’t quite match the naturalistic brilliance and pure appeal of his Dubarry! His time would come later.

Harry and Pola in a tight spot

John Sweeney accompanied with regal assurance followed by revolutionary dynamism, pacing himself perfectly along the narrative as the film gets bigger and bigger to that devastating conclusion: Lillian is, of course, saved at the last from Madame Guillotine but there’s no mercy shown for Pola is bundled, unceremoniously to her death. Germany in 1920; if not an optimistic country then certainly a fatalistic one with, they hoped, no time for tyrants of any kind.

Madame Dubarry is an essential part of any Weimar “watch list”, and this is another reason to maintain calendar discipline and make sure you don’t miss a thing in the BFI’s Weimar Season – full details on the website.

Her name was Pola … The Spanish Dancer (1923), with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope

Pola dancing, Meg Morley playing… it’s enough to make you forget the Lambeth Walk and  flamenco down the Kennington Road.

In his introduction, Amran Vance quoted Jeanine Basinger on Negri’s ability to present emotion throughout form and here her every extension was balletically convincing in a story which sometimes almost put the pain in Spain. You can’t take your eyes of Pola as she ignites the screen with a power and cultured restraint sadly lacking from Wallace Beery’s boorish performance as King Philip IV.

It’s an odd mix of humour and drama that never threatens to take itself too seriously, although if you think the way to a woman’s heart is to shoot her husband and then seductively surprise her on her wedding night; then be my guest. There was the odd snicker at rather than with, but this tone was not unusual in a time of Fairbanks thrills and Barrymore blockbusters: see, how they laugh in the face of death!

Stitch that Pickford!

Any gripes are dispelled by the ambitious direction of Herbert Brenon and the majesty of Negri in a role that lets her dance, fight and love as only she can. Even in the spaces of a vast royal garden party you can see her movement as she leads an energetic group of gypsies in dancing for the Queen. Pola’s gypsy Maritana is distraught as she reads handsome Don Cesar de Bazan (Antonio Moreno) his fortune and faces him with a passion Moreno struggles to match. The story was originally written for Rudolph Valentino and was re-tooled for the female lead, but you can’t imagine even he matching the swash in Pola’s buckle. She’s fierce – Lubitsch fierce – and there’s even a scene nicked from Die Bergkatze (1921) in which she douses herself in cologne.

Herbert Brenon had clearly done his homework and, after two so-so films in Hollywood, the former Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec scored her first major hit, one compared favourably with her old pal Ernst Lubitsch’s work with Mary Pickford in the similar tale of Rosita. Brenon gives Pola every opportunity to show her physicality, dancing and fighting as well as riding a horse and it suits the grand scale of his film in ways few leading actresses could match.

Antonio and Pola...

 Brenon has a cast of thousands and in addition to grand garden parties, shoots a mass carnival scene which is given extra atmosphere by tonnes of confetti and expert depth of field from cinematographer James Wong Howe. There’s excellent tracking work which gives a real feeling of atmosphere as the screen is filled with movement.

Against this are the acute emotions of court intimacy as Adolphe Menjou’s Don Salluste tries to manoeuvre King Phil into betraying his French wife, Queen Isabel of Bourbon (an excellent Kathlyn Williams) who really does deserve better. I liked the way the royal characters are introduced as poor old Velasquez tries to paint Phil and his favourite midgets only to be repeatedly interrupted by every significant new arrival.

Then the gypsies run out at the castle of Don Cesar de Bazan (Antonio Moreno) who is about to fall instantly in love, be declared bankrupt and have to go on the run: a rough night on balance. Luckily his fortune-teller reciprocates and even seeks him out the following day to return a purse one of the gypsies had stolen; the only money he has left it turns out.

I can't watch Adolphe without imagining his Irish brogue and I can't watch Wallace without thinking, "poor Gloria..."

The same young gypsy boy who had stolen the purse, Juan (Robert Agnew who was 23 at the time) turns up next as an ill-treated apprentice to a bullying nobleman. Ironically, Don Cesar defends him from his tormentor and ends up breaking the royal decree: no swordplay on carnival day. Things get really complicated as King Phil decides only the gypsy dancer will do for him and all manner of callous enabling is provided by Don Salluste as events spin seriously out of control…

Making sense of all this was Meg Morley whose exuberant and assured accompaniment was filled with so much content all providing subtle tone and colour to the spectacle. Her understated Latin lines and energy kept pace with every sweep, stomp and throw of the hair, not only from Pola but from Señor Moreno too.

Gimme a break 2017, it's a comedy-drama!!

Another superlative spectacle from Lambeth and London’s finest and, as if all of the above were not enough we were treated to three rare and, in one case, possibly unique, 16mmm films from director and collector, Chris Bird.

The first of these was a Georges Méliès film, Paris to Monte Carlo in Two Hours (1905) – imagine having something like that in your collection!? Prince Leopold can’t be bothered with a 17-hour train journey down south, so a mad motorist gives him a lift at what Phil calculated to be 214 mph. It’s magic Méliès with only one confirmed casualty, a man flattened by the car who is blown up so much he pops.

The great race begins

Next up was a Cecil Hepworth film, Miss Deceit (1915) of which this may have been the only copy remaining – anywhere! It features Johnny Butt as Podgmore, a financial manager who competes with his clerk Whatley (Arthur Staples) for the love of Miss Elysia de Seete (Chrissie White - British film’s first leading lady?). Podgmore keeps Whatley working overtime but the roles are reversed when the latter signs up and becomes a Sergeant. All the girls love a man in uniform, don’t they? Maybe…

Lastly, we faced the real horror of director-to-be James Cruze acting in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912) alongside the delectable Florence La Badie. There’s a lot of potion drinking and gurning as the white-haired Dr J turns painfully into his black-haired and dentally-wayward alter-ego. I also liked the way that not only must the hair change but so must the hat, Hyde purposefully beating it into a jaunty signifier of his up-to-no-goodness. It’s fun and a prime example of the many films Cruze and La Badie were making at the time.

All three were meat and drink to John Sweeney, who took us on a rigorous journey river deep mountain high, via bizarre British love triangles and onto the good, the ugly and La Badie!

Florence and James

Ken Bioscope, you do spoil us rotten sometimes!!

Hyde's bad hat-titude in evidence!

Flo-La-Bad was a stunner

So was Pola

Look at Antonio's hair.

...she was a dancer (classically trained)