Clara take a bow... Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo (1924), NFPF Restoration Streaming

“Nothing but the highest praise can be accorded Clara Bow… Her performance both when she is at the heights of exaltation, and when she is cast into the depths of despair, is nothing short of inspired. There is every reason to suppose that she will become a great favorite in a short time, and her performance in this picture will do much to put her there.”

Exhibitors Trade Review

 

It’s true, there’s nothing that makes this film so thoroughly enjoyable than the emergent presence of Clara Bow and it seems that this was as remarkable then as it still seems now. Written by Waldemar Young, the film is based on the 1920 novel Poisoned Paradise: A Romance of Monte Carlo by Robert William Service a Preston born lad who went to Canada where he became known as the Bard of the Yukon. In reality he spent little or no time in the Gold Rush but having been posted there by his bank, he soon picked up plenty of stories. After success, he certainly spent ample time on the Riviera and could have been inspired by any number of bad nights on the tables of the Casino.

 

Service knew how to tell a popular tale and with sentences rich in imagery and emphatic subtext - portents of destiny - you can see why he was so successful: "Strange! Always drawing. Did I ever tell you that your father was an artist?" In the film this sentiment is echoed after the opening scene of a suicide of his father who shoots himself after losing his all. The portentous intertitles lead us into the narrative from the get-go.

There was a boy in London...

Young Hugh and his fatally ill Mother find out the elder Kildaire has passed away after leaving them to pursue the dream from which he was distracted… “You too will be an artist, but you must be brave my little son: for you have a hard, hard life in front of you…” the rest of the story is trailered right there, who could resist turning the page, or waiting for the next reel. 

“There was a girl in Paris…” shifts the scene with similar economy to Margot, a young girl living in poverty, collecting a bottle of cheap wine in a bar and watching as a local woman, Madame Tranquil, returns with success from Monaco: “God bless Monte Carlo – I bring back a fortune – champagne for all…” Margot takes the bottle to her grandmother who, promptly chases her with a kitchen knife for trying to eat some bread. She falls down the stairs chasing Margot and dies. Luckily Madame Tranquil decides on the spot to adopt her with her new wealth.

Strange how like the whirring wheel Life itself is… the hazards… the final click of the ball of destiny…

It's all a façade!

To Monte Carlo and the Casino! Unchanged season after season, down the magic years… where we meet hustler Monsieur Martel – sometimes called “The Rat” – played by Raymond Griffith with the excess of verve you’d expect. He’s spotted near the roulette by Krantz (George Andre Beranger), the secret service officer who escorts him out of the building as we switch to a grown-up Margot about to throw away her savings on the unforgiving tables remind me how I once took ten Euros into the Casino and came out with eleven… we broke the bank! 

Clara’s reaction shots are all consuming as she loses and she looks fabulous dressed in a mink stole and with a top hat. Then it’s time to visit the grown-up Hugh (Kenneth Harlan), living the life of an impoverished artist in Monte Carlo where usually the only artists are conmen and not painters. Things are looking up though as he’s just sold a painting and can now afford to eat. He’s living in the same Hotel as Margot and The Rat and is as big a mug as you might expect falling for an old line from one Mrs Belmire (Carmel Myers) for whom he ends up paying for dinner. 

Back at their rooms, Margot is in misery, broke and with The Rat harassing her. It’s not just her though and the rogue has been stealing from other guests too forcing Hugh to leave his wallet on a chair and hi door ajar in an attempt to lure the thief into making a move. Sadly, it’s Margot, desperate, who cracks and grabs his stash but he can’t help but feel sorry for her after she tells him her misfortunes – Bow again excelling with her emotions bursting through that expressive prettiness, she’s hypnotic. No wonder then that it is then that Hugh has A Brainwave! 

I have it! Since mother died I have no one – you shall come and be my housekeeper!

 

Clara Bow and Kenneth Harlan

As brother and sister… exclaims the intertitle as they set up home with Hugh’s room divided by a curtain to protect his housekeeper’s modesty but, surely, no one can seriously believe that even with an especially acute artistic temperament, he cannot have missed the ever-so-slightly-gorgeous flaw in his plan…?

Ah well, he’s soon distracted by another man of improbable motives in the form of Professor Durand (Josef Swickard) who has come to break the Bank of Monte Carlo and avenge those who had fallen under its spell. He has worked out the perfect mathematical formula to predict when the numbers will come up and whilst it is another crazy plan we just know that this one is going to work. 

In another shock development, Hugh hears that he has sold all of his paintings and, despite feeling that the Prof is a one sandwich short of a Monet Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe, decides to fund his project. At the same time Hugh doubles his money at the Casino and gets the bug, impressed with his luck. Margot is not impressed but plenty of others are namely Mrs Belmire who Hugh still sees as a romantic interest. Of course, this means that he has her firmly in the “sibling” zone, even though Margot has grown rather fond of the big lug… she calls his bluff and threatens to go off and set up her millenary shop in Paris but something tells her she needs to stay.

The rock on which it stands is built of human skulls! …I shall destroy it!

Mr Griffith, the Rat!

It is, as you can tell, a very bitty narrative but things start to firm up in the second half of the film as all of the connections are revealed and the other “artists” try to work out how the Professor keeps on winning. It’s enlivened by the performances of Griffith and Bow especially and there’s a lovely scene when Martel comes a calling to take advantage of Margot when her “brother” is away and she absolutely batters him – it’s something we love to see in silent film, a “nasty woman” taking charge of the situation! In comparison Kenneth Harlan seems too old for the part but is solid enough although I don’t believe he could even hold a paintbrush.

For such a low-budget movie some of the exterior sets do seem rather extravagant and it suddenly struck me that we might be witnessing the leftovers from Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922) and this turns out to be the case with footage borrowed as per the notes on the NFPC page on which you can watch the film. Apparently the studio told the press that the star were being sent to Monte Carlo but they forgot to mention it was the one built, no doubt way over budget, by “Von”. Nevertheless, it does add some atmosphere to the tale. 

Ben Model perfectly recreates the contemporary feelings of the film with a spirited, playful accompaniment that indicates he’s clearly having a ball playing along with the dazzlers on screen. All in all, a very entertaining experience and one you can have for free at the NFPF site which isright here. As it’s that time of year they would appreciate support in funding this and further restorations and you can send them a Christmas gift at this location. It’s better to give than receive and they are the Professors of Preservation who have definitely found the right formula!

About the Restoration (from the NFPF site): “UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Stanford Theatre Foundation worked from the only surviving element of Poisoned Paradise, a deteriorated 35mm nitrate print. Two missing sections were replaced with stills and intertitles, some derived from the source novel (courtesy of David Stenn). The preservation, which also recreated the film’s tinting scheme, was funded by Saving the Silents, a collaborative project organized by the NFPF and supported by the Save America’s Treasures program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service. Further funding was provided by the Stanford Theatre Foundation. A recent NFPF grant funded scanning and digitization of the preservation print.”

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Responsible gambling...

Detectives in drag...

So, you stay on one side of the curtain and I'll be on the other... you'll be like my sister/mother/housekeeper... 

Brutish and short… Open All Night (1924), BFI with Meg Morley

“I hate him, he lets me do whatever I want! Why does marriage spoil men? It makes them just husbands… “

Viola Dana is another hugely successful silent film star who is not as widely recalled as her contemporary fame might have suggested. As with Mabel Normand, Norma Talmadge and even Lois Webber, she’s fallen from a collective memory dominated by those with longer – post-talkie – careers, better preserved archives and the twists of fashion. As with Pickford and Swanson, Dana was a post-Victorian waif – undernourished and frail in parts such as Children of Eve - and just about five feet in heels. But, as with Mary and Gloria she was also a very fine actress and highly adept at comedy.

In Open All Night she’s part of a splendid cast including two of the great gentlemen of sophisticated silent screwball, Raymond Griffith and Adolphe Menjou and the excellent Jetta Goudal who pretty much steals the show as Lea the aggressive lover of cycling champ Petit Mathieu (Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn). It’s an amusing rather than hilarious film, well made but with a conflicted message about love and physicality that won’t play well with most modern audiences and must have met with disapproval from some at the time: I can’t imagine my Nan putting up with any of this nonsense from any man she decided was worthy of her time… although this is a little balance at the end: big tough guys also need tough women.

“A woman may be fascinated by a brute but she can’t respect him…”

Adolphe Menjou

Set in Paris, the story is essentially about two couples at a cross-roads and we start with Mr and Mrs Duverne played by Menjou and Dana, in their splendid apartment on the Ile du France… He’s watching the couple across the way with his binoculars and she’s reading a romantic novel in an extensive scene in her bath tub. Edmund sees the attractive woman across the way being pushed around and shakes his head as he decides no man could keep a woman’s love if he treated her violently.

Meanwhile Therese, reading a book that equates rough-handling with ecstasy… goads her husband to smash the door down and force her to come out with him. Their friend Isabelle Fevre (Gale Henry) arrives with her latest escort, and American called Igor (Griffith) who is drunk and incapable… Griffith is intermittingly amusing in the film but is under-used.

Isabelle decides that her friend needs taking out of herself and that some sauce must be found for the gander with which to prick the conscience of the over-gallant goose… The conclusion of a marathon cycle race in the velodrome will provide the opportunity.

Viola Dana

At the race, local favourite Petit Mathieu is ahead of a world-class field including a continent (Africa), a country (United States) and a city (New York) … he’s a rangy fellow covered in grease who seems to tower over the rest. Director Paul Bern (yes, Jean Harlow’s tragic Paul…) films the velodrome well with Bert Glennon’s cameras at a low angle, tracking ahead or alongside the racers and generally putting the viewer in amongst it.

In the stands is his girl Lea who snarls her support and gives the films best performance with a swagger that subverts sexual/gender stereotypes mores than anything in the narrative. Hers is no cheap-shot like the reference to the sexuality of the Gendarme swooning over Igor’s signed photo, but a genuinely strong women who knows what she wants – and that is more attention from her man Mathieu.

Lea goes to the Café des Boulevards to drown her sorrows and there’s quite the scene as she downs glass after glass of Pernod or possibly Absinth while repulsing numerous polishes-but-dull men in evening suits. Edmund is impressed – he’d obviously prefer a tipsy lass with attitude to a demanding wife. The two get on and end up at the Velodrome.

“So, you want this pin-point of a woman, do you?!”

Adolphe Menjou and Jetta Goudal

By this time Therese has taken her own interest in the hunky cyclist – far taller, muscular and greasier than her husband and is applying more oils and leg massage between stages of the race. She’s not entirely sure that size matters until, inevitably, their other halves discover them… and, as Griffith valiantly attempts to squeeze out some slapstick laughs by drunkenly dancing with the arcing bikes on the track, the marriage square must resolve itself to a circle…

This was enjoyable if not hilarious as the reviews of the time seemed to suggest with  Film Daily saying: “The story is slight… Whilst the excellent characterisations and the skilful direction is important, it is a question whether or not the picture fans care sufficiently about this.”

Meg Morley’s accompaniment was a jazzed as you’d expect and she enlivened the narrative throughout with period-appropriate flourishes and the light-touch assurance you’d expect from a Kennington Bioscope alumnus!

All in all, a precious flicker for the so many now-familiar faces who starred in it.

Raymond Griffith

After the film, Viola decided to marry her cyclist “Lefty” – who was a former football player – at least up until 1929 after which she made the switch to golf with Jimmy Thomson with whom she was married to for 15 years.

Dana was not one of those who continued into sound but she was a star for twenty years and more. In January 1922, Screenland Magazine reported that she and Bebe Daniels were more popular in Japan than Mary Pickford and Mary Miles Minter. Now we have more of her films being rediscovered by modern audiences such as this one - us and it - and there’s also a new DVD for The Cossack Whip (1916) from a Kickstarter project initiated by Edward Lorusso.

Let's have more Viola (and Jetta too).

Viola Dana in The Cossack Whip (1916)

The funniest woman in the World… Exit Smiling (1926), Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope 2nd Silent Laughter Weekend

The Cinema Museum’s redoubtable tour guide, Morris Hardcastle, was offering his hand at £50 per shake given he had once shook Charlie Chaplin’s hand, for David Robinson and Kevin Brownlow he was suggesting a bargain £100 given the number of silent performers these two have met over the years. But before Exit Smiling, our final film of the packed, inspirational Saturday programme, Mr Robinson told us of meeting its inimitable star, Beatrice Lillie at a screening of the film at the BFI in the late 1960’s and raised the stakes once more. 

David said she was often described as the funniest woman in the World and on that night in her seventies she still dazzled in unpredictable ways slaying the audience and laughing throughout the screening: “she’s very good, she does things the way I do them!” she remarked at her younger self… a one-off performer with unique timing and sense of the ridiculous and yet who could also reduce you to tears (with or without an onion…).

In her excellent, in-depth introduction, Michelle Facey related the opinions of Chaplin and Keaton on this Anglo-Canadian marvel including the latter sleeping outside her hotel room door – a slapstick guard of honour for this toweringly-talented Torontian. Sadly (for us) Hollywood couldn’t easily cast this quirky and stunningly individual talent and, for this and no doubt several other reasons (maybe she just didn’t want to?) this was Bea’s only silent film and she made few after, much preferring the more interactive and improvisational freedoms of the stage.

Tonight, we watched not only Kevin Brownlow’s 16mm copy of Exit Smiling but, as it turned out, Miss Lillie’s own, so I’d make that another £50 for shaking the hand of projectionist Dave Locke.

Beatrice Lillie and Jack Pickford

We are truly blessed by these associations with the silent past and also by expert accompaniment from the Bioscope Players. Meg Morley, a jazz musician by night and, a silent film accompanist by er, other nights, played along with a thoroughly modern mix of jazz-age themes and improvised scoring that sound for all the world like it’s been months in the preparation. I always imagine the music as a duet and Bea is such a graceful performer with a dancer’s arm extensions and amazing timing, that the music followed suit; to this extent Meg riffed with Bea and took some bold decisions along the way (a flash of Carmen for the vamping!) enjoying the tones as much as the audience.

I’ve previously raved about the actress and the film here if you want a fuller synopsis. I'd watched the Warner Archives DVD but, as ever, it's still a treat to see this film on screen especially in what Ms P. Hutchinson once described as a silent speakeasy: this crowd are fascinating as well as fascinated and all respect the subject.

Raymond Griffith and Vera Reynolds not in a night club...

With Miss Lillie tonight and Mabel Normand last week, it’s easy to forget that men can also be funny too… The day opened with Raymond Griffith in The Night Club (1925) a film that didn’t actually feature a club but as Kevin Brownlow’s introduction made clear, had been logged down as a title before script or even story. Block-booking in advance meant that there had to be a film of this title and so it was squeezed into the first title card as a gentlemen’s club dedicated to avoiding marriage.

Griffith’s character get’s jilted at the alter as his fiancé’s ex returned at the last minute from a presumed death on a desert island and so keen was he to marry that he tries to ban all women from his life. His fortune turns when an uncle dies and leaves him a million, but the condition is that he must marry his second cousin (Vera Reynolds).

He heads off for foreign climes only to find not only bump into but fall in love with Vera’s character, but things get awkward when they both realised, and she miss-hears his intentions. There’s a nice cameo from Wallace Beery (a bad-tempered Mexican) and an even better one from Louise Fazenda who plays his “Carmen” for whom he would kill whether you pay him or not.

Griffith is so watchable, he takes everything in his stride – even this daft script – with a wide-eyed smile and a look straight to the audience. Costas Fotopolous joined in the fun on piano, twinkling the ivories in sympathy with Raymond's knowing gaze. 

Henrietta Watson, Pauline Johnson and the impossibly youthful Leslie Howard

Then we had Tony Fletcher’s traditional sweep through rare and early British film and a revelation to me with a silent and very young Leslie Howard in Bookworms (1920). Based on a scenario from AA Milne (yes, him) it told the story of a young chap, Richard (Howard) and his attempts to woo his neighbour Miranda Pottlebury (Pauline Johnson) away from her over-protective Aunt and Uncle. The Pottlebury’s all use the local library and Richard starts to leave notes in books they order in the hope of communicating with the girl of his fancy… The results are gently amusing, and it is a very charming film with glimpses of post-War English gardens and sitting rooms.

A Fugitive Futurist (1924) was your standard time-travelling con which did feature some interesting special affects showing London as it will be in the future… a derelict Strand and water-filled Trafalgar Square are, of course, only just around the corner now thanks to Brexit…

Lillian Hall-Davis, Sybil Rhoda, Humberston Wright and Phyllis Neilson-Terry in Boadicea (1927)

Starlings of the Screen (1925) featured a host of young gals looking for fame with the Stoll Picture Company, including Sybil Rhoda who was to feature in Hitchcock’s Downhill as well as Boadicea (1927) – her favourite performance – with Lillian Hall-Davis.  Various screen tests are featured including professionals such as Moore Marriott playing alongside the hopefuls who include Molly Weeks, Phyllis Garton, Nancy Baird and Shailagh Allen but Sybil wins and gets the part of Melody Rourke in Sahara Love (1926).

“Look at all that sand, dozens of it…”

Crossing the Great Sagrda (1924) is almost indescribable; a mock ethno-graphical film with title cards that could have been written by a Goon had they yet been invented. It featured sand courtesy of Blackpool Borough Council and free-form intertitles each one attributed to a different film company. Whatever it was about, I liked it and I laughed.

Almost as barmy was Beauty and the Beast (1922) featuring Guy Newall as The Beast and Ivy Duke as… you can guess. Meg Morley brought musical method to all the madness.

After lunch it was time to cut to the Chase, Charlie Chase… as Matthew Ross took us through some more highlights from the second coolest silent comic who was so much his own man any comparison belittles his suave majesty.

Charlie helps a pal pull his car out from a muddy patch and ends up losing his own car to Hal Roache’s ACME mud pool and then goes in a brilliantly desperate search of trousers in The Way of all Pants (1927). The session ended with plastic-surgery farce Mighty Like a Moose (1927) which is a work of World-cultural significance.

Mr Sweeney stayed cool at the keys and kept pace with the Chase.

Monty Banks bronze medalist in the Freestyle Moustache 

Then in a surprise entry for moustache of the day (he came third…), Monty Banks twitched his winning ways through A Perfect Gentleman (1927). You can’t fail to like Monty in this well-balanced comedy, as he chases around a ship trying to prove his innocence after having crashed his own wedding inadvertently drunk and then doubled his disgrace by being accused of robbing his former fiancé’s father’s bank. Not the day’s first wedding nor the last bank robbery. 

Costas was really on the beat for this lightweight charmer and he was clearly enjoying himself as his punchy lines accompanied Banks' every pratfall.

The KB weekenders are great for bringing attention to performers such as Banks and Griffiths, but we were about to be reminded of the sheer excellence of one of those who is deservedly still widely remembered. Four commentators were given the essentially impossible task of choosing a favourite moment from a Buster Keaton film.

Even married to the star, Natalie Talmadge wonders why sisters Constance and Norma always had easier gigs...

David Robinson chose the breath-taking closing scenes from Our Hospitality (1923) when our hero rescues Natalie Talmadge from the rapids, a waterfall and over-bearing relatives. Then Kevin Brownlow’s choice was the Tong war from The Cameraman including a mini-tribute to the camerawork in Intolerance I hadn’t previously spotted.

Poly Rose (known to many on The Twitter, as The Flying Editor) is a film editor (natch) who revealed some secrets about Keaton’s own editing for Sherlock Junior. It takes one to know one and it was fascinating to see how this mind-boggling segment was constructed through double exposure. Publicity stills, and contemporary reviews also suggest that there were other versions of Buster’s somnambulant transition from what we see, Keaton test screened his work and fine-tuned the brilliance.

Last up was David Macleod, broadcaster and president of the Blinking Buzzards, the UK Keaton Society, who has written extensively on the comedian’s sound films which extend far beyond his relatively-short silent period. He chose the pulsating climax to Steamboat Bill Jr (1928) as our hero literally risked life and limb in a town torn apart by hurricanes and another extraordinary river rescue.

Buster to the rescue as Marion Byron clings on in Steemboat Bill Jnr

John Sweeney accompanied and once again demonstrated extraordinary fluidity for those river-chase sequences but most of all he really Keatoned those keyboards!

A day of pure concentrated silent bliss – where else would we see these films and hear these musicians?! Thankyou Bioscope and the Cinema Museum.

The Way of all Pants!

Double Bebe… She’s a Sheik (1927)/Miss Bluebeard (1925), with Meg Morley and Lillian Henley, Kennington Bioscope

Tonight, Kevin Brownlow had promised us a surprise from his own collection and he delivered with a 16mm transfer of She’s a Sheik that hasn’t been projected in public since I was in short pants (no, even earlier than that troublesome New Romantic period…). The film had been transferred by a British collector using ex-air force equipment and yet looked pretty fine partly due to the extensive  repair work of the Bioscope’s ace projectionist Dave Locke.

Kevin described it as madcap like Hellzapoppin and whilst it doesn’t quite match the madness of that film it’s heart-warmingly daft with a welcome eye on gender-reversal that suits Bebe Daniel’s natural intelligence as well as William Powell’s willingness to never take himself that seriously. It’s a little patchy in parts but redeemed by Daniel’s making like Fairbanks as well as her old sparing partner Gloria and, of course, Mr Valentino.  No one can pet a peacock (not going there…) wearing an outrageous feathered head-dress quite like Bebe and she out smoulders Rudolph whilst lazily stroking a leopard which is clearly benefiting from the same kind of head doctor as the Happy Mondays in 1991.

William Powell is about to get his thawb handed to him

Bebe is a magnetic presence and a natural comedienne as she would show from the Mack Sennett days through to the wise-cracking screwballs of the thirties and beyond after she settled in the UK as Mrs Lyons (not Leopard you may note…). She has a striking, thoroughly-modern face and yet there’s always a twinkle… not so far from either Doug or Rudy then: these people had The Glamour alright.

So does William Powell and Richard Arlen for that matter, even when their characters are being humiliated by the film’s star. Bebe plays Zaida a good catholic Spanish girl who is the adopted daughter of Sheik Yusif ben Hamad (Paul McAllister … not many of us Paul’s get to be a Sheik!). The Sheik is fully supportive of her right to choose a marriage partner and very quickly she spies just the man, a French army officer, Captain Colton (Arlen), the trouble is he’s already seeing a blonde Wanda Fowler (Josephine Dunn) who Zaida spies two-timing him.

Reversing the, actually quite disturbing, kidnapping approach to courtship from other films about similar things, Zaida takes her Captain prisoner and quickly wins him over through basic womanly wiles and the offer of food, drink and a good pipe. But it’s at this point that the nasty Kada (Mr Powell) decides he’s going to take this woman himself and overcome the French forces… What do you reckon to his chances of either?

Dreamy duo: Richard Arlen and Bebe Daniels

Meg Morley accompanied having not even seen the film before and provided some luscious chords with period-jazz flavours, sweeping minor shapes that swept through the sand and patient, confident themes that embraced the unpredictability of the action and the unseen narrative.

Lilian Henley provided similar service for the first film with her own trademark polish and assurance. If Meg’s improvisational jazz background informs her approach perhaps Lillian’s experience as a professional actress informs her own highly-disciplined and sympathetic playing. I watched Ben Travers flapper farce Thark last week and it’s so close to Miss Bluebeard in style and I’m taking a wild guess here, I could easily imagine it’s one of Lillian’s favourite periods?

The film is not as zany as SAS and creakily shows its stage roots having been based on a play, Little Miss Bluebeard, by Avery Hopwood but does have its moments and some amazing costumery especially for Bebe to wear.

The plot is as convoluted as all get out and shows once again that you should never let anyone impersonate you as you can end up married or even in court (name that Colleen Moore film!). But successful composer Larry Charters (Robert Frazer) who is visiting Paris is so fed up of young women chasing him that he asks his mate Bob Hawley (Kenneth MacKenna) to impersonate him so he can focus on his writing.

He runs into stage actress Colette (see what they did there…) who is introduced in one of the film’s cleverest moments behaving on stage as we expect her character to behave in the film… and, one thing leads to another and a drunken mayor marries them (dontcha just hate it when that happens!).

So far, so what you may say but when Colette meets the real Larry it is, ow you say, l’amour at first sight (Colette has title card French to die for, n’est pas).

Robert Frazer, Martha O'Dwyer and Raymond Griffith

It gets complicated and really the funniest thing is the excellent Raymond Griffith trying to get some sleep as The Honourable Bertie Bird even whilst mostly wearing his trademark top hat.

Two sides to Bebe Daniels and proof that she could more than match anyone for comedy, swinging action and romance. Plus... Swanson and the lion? Yeah, got me a leopard.

Before Bebe we had a Christmas short, a British version of The Little Match Girl (1914) which was indeed short and bitter sweet with Meg accompanying.

This was all a fine way to finish off the year at the Bioscope. Here’s to 2018 and The Cinema Museum continuing to support this excellent enterprise.

You're twisting my leopard man...

Epic! British Silent Film Festival, Day Three

It started with the 600 and it ended with Civil War; Day Three at the BSFF was not for the faint-hearted.

Kevin Brownlow is on record as saying that the Charge of the Light Brigade in Maurice Elvey’s Balaclava (1928) was the best mass action scene in British silent film and it’s hard to argue after one of the most visceral of sequences involving hundreds of men and horses from a number of battalions recreated the heroic disaster on the fields of Aldershot.

In her, uniquely well-informed introduction, Lucie Dutton explained how the silent version was never released with the film held back for sound overdubs before finally hitting screens in 1930. The silent version we saw is itself a reduction, focusing on the history and largely ignoring the romance between displaced Scottish farm lass Jean McDonald (the lovely Benita Hume) and disgraced Scots Guard John Kennedy (arguably the best looking MacLaglen, Cyril). As it is, the story switches from a brief meeting to Jean riding along with the cavalry to warn as the Russians gather for attack.

Benita and Cyril in a scene missing from the version we saw... but does it exist?

But once the action starts it is spellbinding and very poignant, with Tennyson’s words, Elvey’s meticulous soldiers and John Sweeney inspired accompaniment. As her beloved John heads into the valley of death, Jean sits with a group of peasant women in off-the-shoulder torment as the brigade charges into impossible odds, facing enemy fire on three flanks.

As the few dozen survivors wearily gather on a ridge you can’t avoid the actuality; this is how they died for Queen and Country. Elvey is more concerned with history than anything else in these moments and the Russians are evenly painted as the formidable fighting force they were with the cartoon nastiness coming from Mr Miles Mander as a dastardly British officer. No one could handle a moustache with such attitude.

Not all British films were as balanced and Walter Summers, otherwise forensic, Men Like These (1931) contained some racial stereotyping bewildering to modern viewers. His story of a stricken submarine and trapped sailors aiming for a longshot float to safety using Davis re-breathing kits, portrays the two Asian characters as limp in a crisis as our brave boys overcome their situation using guile and grit. It’s tense and if you’re claustrophobic not a comfy watch.

The next session featured a glorious compilation of films compiled by the BFI to hand-paint a picture of the world in 1913 before we said goodbye to all that. The BFI’s Bryony Dixon explained the popularity of these “interest” films as they not only showed other cultures but also the source of the foodstuffs consumed at home. Tea, Cultivation, Harvest and Processing (1909) does what it says on the tin and there’s a poignancy now in watching the two well-dressed ladies at the end sipping the end product in their comfy parlour: the milk goes in after the tea is poured of course.

There were some stunning hand-coloured images as we saw Delhi, Rangoon, Java, Borneo and, of course, Korea, Land of the Morning Calm (1908). The films were mostly clustered between 1907 and 1911 and these foreign lands seemed intimate and familiar even In the Land of Monkeys and Serpents (1910) aided by Stephen Horne’s accompaniment – a real treat for him to bring out the bells and whistles, a one-man gamelan.

From Sunda Islands snake-wrangling in 1910 to frozen nitrate in 1978 and Bill Morrison’s extraordinary cinematic archaeology. Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) was the perfect post-prandial immersion with an electro-minimalist, glacial score from Alex Somers most familiar to me as producer of Iceland’s Sigur Rós. It’s a remarkable feat of editing and narrative construction, that uses elements of the 370-odd films recovered from the perma-frost of Dawson to help tell the story of the city as well as the mixed-bag, treasure trove itself. Fascinating stills from Eric Hegg whose 200 glass-plate negatives were only rediscovered in the 1950s, take the story back to the original gold-rush in the area and show the town grown to over 100,000 as men flooded North in search of their fortunes.

It was the most quietly disruptive cinema of the day that was full of multi-layered shocks and connections… When you consider that it was here that the Trump family fortune began with Grandpa Trump’s hotel, you realise that this history is still unfolding: land-grabs, greed and “gold-rush” mentalities are still be found in the land of opportunity.

Our second Bill Morrison epic also drew comparisons with the present day as his The Great Flood (2012) which used found footage to recreate the story of the flooding of the Mississippi Basin on 1927. Morrison takes so much care in assembling his materials some scenes almost convinced you that he’d gone back in time to shoot them. It was a testament to the news reporting of the time that so many aspects of the flood were covered as lives and homes were saved as the levees broke arlight... left right and centre. Memphis Minnie’s famous song battled in my head with John Bonham’s massive drumming on the Led Zeppelin version as the actual score from alt-jazz guitarist Bill Frisell floated intriguingly over the visuals. Not to everyone’s taste, Frisell’s recorded score was performed live with an original screening of the film and worked well for me apart from the last scene of Big Bill Broonzy and other bluesmen in the early 60s… it would have been good to have heard their playing at that point. But overall, another stunning production from Mr Morrison.

Next, a complete change of pace with Different from the Others (1919) and a revelatory examination of Paragraph 175 from the German penal code of 1871. In his learned introduction Matthew Jones Associate Professor in Film Studies at DMU Leicester, presented a timeline showing the progress of this code from the empire through the Weimar years and the calamities post 1933. After the war, censorship was temporarily lifted enabling the film to be made with the support and contribution of Dr Magnus Herschfeld, leader of the German Homosexual Emancipation Movement and head of Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

Connie mit Dr Magnus Herschfeld

This film was the first to deal explicitly with homosexuality and Conrad Veidt is, of course, brilliant as the closeted violinist, Paul Korner who is only conflicted by society’s double-standards. The film features Herschfeld’s theories of the “third sex” which have obviously been long over-taken scientifically but his call for understanding and unequivocal belief that “love for one’s own sex can be just as pure and noble as that for the opposite sex…” has endured.

Paragraph 175 was finally taken off the statute books in 1994.

Decisions, decisions for Raymond Griffith

As the long day closed, we were up for a laugh and the irrepressible Raymond Griffith delivered in Clarence Badger’s Hands Up (1926) as Neil Brand gleefully played along. Griffith plays Jack, a confederate spy (how very 2017!) who attempts to prevent Montagu Love’s Yankee Captain Edward Logan from delivering the gold the Union needs to win the Civil War. En route he faces capture and execution but also the most difficult of choices as he has to choose between the daughters of mine owner Silas Woodcock (Mack Swain) played by Marian Nixon and Virginia Lee Corbin.

Jack’s never phased certainly not facing a firing squad when he distracts the boys in deeper blue by throwing plates in the air and by, literally, painting himself out of a corner nor even when romancing the girls as their stagecoach is attacked by Indians: as the arrows fly they mistake them for a bee. The ending was a double whammy of historical timing and the most unlikely, jaw-droppingly irreverent, romantic solution. The pace is relentless and the comedy is probably metatextual proving once again that we were just as clever ninety years as we ever are now.

I’d like to say we sprang into the night with the same verve, reconstructing Griffith’s comedy battling across Leicester’s fearsome inner ring road but we were all filmed out and it was only Friday…