Adorée arrives... The Eternal Struggle (1923), Joe Harvat Restoration

Restoring reputation as well as materials, performance and craft! This film has a measly 5.9 on IMDB with 20% giving just 1.0 which makes you wonder how many have actually seen it or, in fairness, at least in its current form as restored by Joe Harvat, who used a Kickstarter to fund the project in 2025. The sole user review there says it is “dated” which is an unhistorical term with no utility… how can anything be created and immunised against the opinions and shifted tastes of the generations to come, especially over a century later. It is of its time, but then, aren’t we all. The film was considered lost until the Russian archive handed over a copy to the Library of Congress in 2010… but it is not only found but "reborn" for a new generation to properly evaluate.

 

And, what The Eternal Struggle is, is a fun ride with some superb performances, action scenes and with outstanding location work in what looks like somewhere near Nell Shipman’s God’s Country on the borders of the US and Canada. The Silent Film Stills Archive has a snippet in which the director, Reginald “Realism” Barker explains that almost all of the outdoor scenes were shot “in the glacial fields of Alberta”. Almost certainly, Nell was an influence on the film’s rugged approach but there was also a trend in films based on the Canadian Mounted Police as well as the location with the adaptation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild released only a couple of weeks before.

 

Reginald Barker directingPat O'Malley and Renée Adorée (SFSA)

This story was based on New Zealander Edith Joan Lyttleton’s 1913 novel The Law-Bringers, the film places the performers not just in the context of the time but also in the chilling rivers and frozen mountains close to the actual locations. The most spectacular backdrops were around Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta with the production crew travelling to the Canadian Rockies. Other scenes used the reliably more accessible and far warmer, Big Bear Lake, California.

 

At this point, Renée Adorée’s acting also owes much to Mary Pickford with high energy bounce and a fighting spirit. But, whilst this was one of her first leading roles in Hollywood, possibly her breakthrough, she already had her own skill-set honed in Europe* and when her eyes flow with tears and her face is set she can be both frighteningly febrile and sweetly sympathetic. Her most famous role was probably in The Big Parade (1925) as the French girl who steels John Gilbert’s American heart in war-torn France, the woman who like the war, never leaves him. With her huge brown eyes, slight overbite and liberated movement, she was atypical for a Hollywood leading lady of the time and in a less obvious way brought a European sexuality to the screen as with the Polish Pola. This is a significant film for presenting her breakthrough in a starring role.

 

Renée Adorée AKA Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves

“Renée Adorée, who was often given French-Canadian roles, was at her most ebullient in The Eternal Struggle, leaping up and down in the middle of the street and egging on two fellow French-Canadians to fight over her with knives…”

Hollywood's Canada : the Americanization of our national image by Berton, Pierre, 1975, McClelland and Stewart

 

As Berton goes on to say, this film was very much part of the genre of a “Mountie Film” which normally featured the North-Western Mounted Police in a “love versus duty” quandary, usually pursuit of a sister, a brother or a romantic interest (and has done the maths analysing some thirty films that fit the brief) who they have to decide to capture or let go… and the Mounties always get their man (or woman).  

 

The film starts with one such moment as Bucky O'Hara (Pat O'Malley) – possibly the sole Irish immigrant in North America who didn’t join the NYC Police Department – is on the trail of one Oily Kirby (Pat Harmon). He finds a cabin in the woods which is inhabited by the very fine looking Camille Lenoir (Barbara La Marr aka "The Girl Who is Too Beautiful" and Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler’s namesake when she came to Hollywood in 1938). Bucky takes a shine to Camille and decides to stick around – which doesn’t sound to me like the typical MO of the NWMP but whether be luck or design, he spots Oily hiding in a basket and proceeds to arrest him. Camille pulls a gun and Oily almost escapes following a short chase… Bucky got his man.

Pat O'Malley and Barbara La Marr

Back in the town of Grey Wolf we meet the locals including the vibrant Andrée Grange (Renée Adorée) who is dancing for the locals, two of whom almost come to blows over her after offering her presents. She is the “idol” of every man in Grey Wolf although there are perhaps different words that could be used to describe their regard. Take the distinctly dodgy Barode Dukane (Wallace Beery) who has a name as well as a face that only a mother could love and yet who seems to think he can buy anything, even love, telling Andrée that he has presents for her.

 

Meanwhile Bucky arrives with Oily in tow and delivers him to Sgt. Neil Tempest (Earle Williams) at the Mounties’ headquarters. Bucky goes to the bar, run by Andrée’s father Pierre Grange (Josef Swickard), and in the drinking and dancing melee meets the young woman and gets a slap for being just too forward. Now, you know and I know that this is cinema code, even in 1923, for the start of true love but there’s a big fly in that ointment: Sgt Tempest has already proposed.

 

Pat O'Malley, Renée Adorée and Earle Williams make a crowd.

One thing leads to another thing and then another… the two men realise their mutual interest and both do the decent thing as Bucky pretends to only be “joking” about his affection for Andrée. Broken hearted she goes to see Barode Dukane who has been so generous with his presents and who we now know has some kind of criminal connection to Camille… One thing leads to another and a title card reveals that he sees his chance to “comfort” the distraught girl who we next see running into her father’s bas saying that she killed Ducane!

  

“She is not mine and she is not yours… She belongs to the Crown and she’s going back!”

 

Her father and her “loyal best friend” Wo Long (George Kuwa, Japanese and American actor) help her to escape and she heads to Herschel Island – in the Yukon and far, far North-West of the actual locations - to board a ship and away to the mercies of the sea but O’Hara follows and after an altercation with two sailors, Capt. Jack Scott (Anders Randolf) and his first mate (Fred Kohler who plays second mate in The Hell Ship (1927)), does his duty and arrests his sweetheart. With love overpowering his sense of duty, Sgt Tempest also follows and tries to help her free, initiating the film’s most thrilling sequence as the two canoe down a stretch referred to as the Devil’s Cauldron “a six-mile gash through solid granite” ending with a waterfall that would leave them dashed on the rocks below, unless… someone can get to them in time.

 

Renée and Wally

And still, the question remains – did Andrée kill Dukane and what actually happened on that dark and stormy night?

After Gosfilmofond gifted a digital copy of the film to the U. S. Library of Congress along with a number of other films, in 2010, Joe Harvat was able to secure a 2k scan and then spent seven-months, digitally cleaning the film. The opening and closing credits were missing and all of the title cards had to be translated/rewritten as English. Apart from some deterioration at the beginning the film looks so crisp and detailed – a pleasure to screengrab!

 

Joe also commissioned David Drazin to provide a fresh piano accompaniment for the film which enhances the viewing experience with an energy and style of the period.

What the papers said:

 

The New York Times reviewer, Mordaunt Hall, was a tough man to impress but he saw the film as a "vigorous and interesting" melodrama in his write up of 10^th September 1923. He considered it as a superior example of the "Mountie" genre, praising Del Marr for her presence and Adorée for her "extraordinary charm" and ability to convey the character's terror and innocence – exactly as I said above! He was also impressed by the film’s “ruggedness” and I should think so given the effort involved in filming in Alberta…

 

The Variety review of 23^rd September called the film "one of the best of the snow pictures" and expected it to be a “solid money-maker” as a superior Mountie film. They focused on the box office draw of Barbara La Marr but were also very impressed with Adorée’s "vivid personality" and "emotional depth” as she carried the weight of the film’s dramatic tensions. There was praise too for the location shoots which captured the beautiful isolation and with Barker's ability to make the cold feel "visceral" and "authentic" to the audience.

 

Rugged

Photoplay Magazine (November 1923) described the film as a "thrilling and picturesque" drama, with the "Northwest" setting feel like a character itself, thanks to the "magnificent snow photography". There was also praise for the chemistry between Renée Adorée and Pat O'Malley – and, for me, the latter looks much more convincing once he’s in the great white outdoors with stubble softening his made-up features!

 

Ultimately The Eternal Struggle makes the most of its story and provides a fine example of staple fair at this stage of silent cinema. It’s a very worthwhile project from Joe Harvat and I applaud his efforts to make the film available again – a Kickstarter page to follow with interest!.

 

* Adorée presented as French in Hollywood but was in fact born Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves on September 30, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany the daughter of a London-born circus performer, James Reeves, and a Belgian mother, Victorine Schreiber. The theory is that it was more interesting to be French at the time when there were many famous Brits in town but she actually adopted her new identity in Australia - see link below. In Europe, she had come up through the circus and then theatre but her first film was made in Australia: £500 Reward (1918).

 

She’s billed as Rene Adorée on a poster for the film and as a member of The Magleys, a duo she had formed with the American dancer Guy Magley. The Melbourne Punch described them as among most graceful dancers to ever visit Australia and this poise, along with her circus abilities – acrobat and horse riding – stood her in good stead with the action and dancing in The Eternal Struggle and many more!

There's a fascinating  post outlining the actor's early years by Nick Murphy on the Forgotten Australian Actors site from which the image of The Magleys is taken below - excellent research on a person still seen as French by many, the truth is far more interesting!

Cor blimey, n’est pas!!

Guy Magley and Renée Adoree performing in Samples in Australia in 1918.

Sideshow shocker… The Show (1927), Tod Browning

 

"… one of the most bizarre productions to emerge from silent cinema."

Alfred Eaker, Tod Browning Retrospective (2016)

The recent release of Criterion’s Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers set spurred me into finally catching up with this feature which reunites the winning team from The Big Parade, Renée Adorée and John Gilbert. The Show is not on the set and was released just before The Unknown (1927) which is featured in the restored version, along with The Mystic (1925) and Freaks (1932), arguably his most famous film after Dracula (1931).

 

All three are delicious treats on their own but The Show could easily have been the fourth film on the set, meeting, as it does, some of the key criteria for classic Browning films. It’s set in a circus, has a set of unusual characters and performers and an evil bad man who will stop at no extreme to a) win the girl and b) eliminate the opposition in as contrived a way as possible. On top of this there is the usual exotica and elements of the uncanny which may or may not be true.

 

Why was Browning so obsessed with these outsider tales? Well, he did run away to join the circus leaving his comfortable middle-class family before completing high school aged just 16 in 1896. Wikipedia has Browning’s birth year as 1889 but it was 1880 according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not to mention Wiki’s own maths which has him working 13 years in the circus as a roustabout, a sideshow "spieler", clown and a live burial act which he was billed as "The Living Hypnotic Corpse" before moving to films aged 29 in 1909.

Renée Adorée and John Gilbert

So many early filmmakers represented the American, and British, theatrical tradition but here was a man steeped in Carny Culture and whom was used to the milling crowds and on-site appeals for attention of the “barker”, the finest salesman at the greatest show on earth which as he worked through the 1910s was undoubtedly film. He made a number of gritty films with Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean as the twenties progressed and then, with Chaney otherwise engaged with Eleanor Boardman and Billy Haines in Tell it to the Marines (1927), he made The Show with the ultimate leading man, John Gilbert with Adorée on board for the heavy dramatic lifting and Lionel Barrymore for the pure spite and evil. It’s a very odd film that does indeed anticipate the subsequent Browning/Cheney classic, The Unknown and so, consider this an aperitif if you are in any doubt about purchasing the box set!

 

Our story begins in exotic Budapest, at The Palace of Illusions carnival run by a ruthless man known as The Greek (Lionel Barrymore) who has a side line in murder and extortion. He’s not the only one as handsome Cock Robin (Gilbert) is busy trying to romance Lena (Gertrude Short) the daughter of Driskai, a wealthy sheep merchant, in order to erm, fleece her. Robin is indeed the cock of the walk and is friendly with many of the women in the circus and in the general location.

 

You’re hired as freaks… not vampires!

 

He has an emotional connection to Salome (Renée Adorée) but she is involved with The Greek and therefore out of bounds. This doesn’t stop her shoeing off female interest in Robin and, as above, inadvertently foreshadowing two of Tod Browning’s best known future successes in the process, although the vampires in question are of the Theda Bara kind and not Bela Lugosi. Salome doesn’t like Robin’s womanising but she can’t do much about it: these circus folk are edgy and he's a cad.

Madame Web: Edna Tichenor unblinking.

But they're also darned strange as we meet some Browning surrealist sideshow treats including The Living Hand of Cleopatra!, ZELA the half lady! - "Believe me, boys... there's no cold feet here to bother you!" - and NEPTUNA, the Queen of the Mermaids!. Then there's ARACHNIDA! The Human Spider played by the striking Edna Tichenor (who also featured in Browning's lost classic, London After Midnight (1927)) who "...eats flies on week days... and butterflies on Sundays!" What influence the director had on popular culture you can only guess but these ideas, drawn from the carnival tradition would fuel horror and fantasy media for decades to come: film, pulp fiction and, of course, comic books.

They do, however, put on a heck of a show, the highlight of which is a re-enactment of the biblical story of Salome, complete with the dance of the seven veils (clearly not performed by Renée Adorée, the dancer having her back to camera?) with Robin playing John the Baptist and some complex trickery involved to give the impression of his head being sliced off by sword and then handed on a plate to Salome. I don’t know about you, but this looks dangerous to me… but that’s the circus and not even the audience are safe after a man is bitten by a poisonous lizard.

 

You little fool! He’s only after your money, get out of here!

 

Renée Adorée, the silent era's Olivia Coleman?

That’s not the evening’s only death though as Driskai gets murdered leaving Robin’s little deception becomes crueller than he ever intended, culminating in Salome disabusing his young target of his sincerity. She runs off sobbing in great distress leaving him with her money… making him look potentially guilty, is there anything that can make him realise the error of his ways? But finding a conscience is the least of his worries as The Greek decides it’s time to stop Cock Robin stealing Salome and devises a cunning plan that could see him losing his head… 

 

Barrymore is evil and Gilbert convincingly laddish but it’s Adorée who takes the plaudits for her emotional warmth and eyes forever on the brink of welling over. She’s like a silent Olivia Coleman and who knows what she could have gone on to achieve in the talkies had she not died at just 35 in 1933 after contracting tuberculosis a few years earlier. She came from circus stock herself and performed as an acrobat, dancer and bareback rider throughout Europe before her big break into acting.

Based on Charles Tenney Jackson's novel The Day of Souls (1910), The Show is every bit as offbeat as The Unknown. It has plenty of Browning weirdness including a lizard supposedly more poisonous than a snake and which kills one of the customers. Such things happen at the circus and there’ll be worse to come for visitors to Tod’s Extraordinary World of Adventures!

 

Jack the lad...

There’s a new Blu-ray due out from Redwood Creek – a 4k transfer from a 16mm copy - and also a nice crisp Warner Archives DVD which you can still pick up from eBay. Essential items for your Tod shelf alongside that new Criterion set!

Sideshow Note: One notable sidenote in a life full of them was Browning crashing his car into a train whilst inebriated in 1915. He suffered serious injury but another passenger, the great Elmer Booth – star of Griffith’s famously close-up Musketeer of Pig Alley, was killed instantly. What Booth might have gone on to achieve we can only guess but Tod survived to film another day and who knows how this brush with mortality and the guilt he carried, impacted his creative choices going forward. His films always look at the more uncomfortable aspects of our lives… even amongst the freakery and showmanship.

 

 

Comrades in films… Silent Guns, Kennington Bioscope Great War Centenary Day

There’s film of history and film as history: films that are essentially primary source in themselves, how else to view almost any cinema after the Great War in which six million men served, 725,000 British servicemen died and over 1.75 million were wounded, half of which left with life-changing injuries.

My great Uncle Alec lived the rest of his life with shrapnel in his skull whilst my granddad William saw much that changed his attitude to class, politics and religion; he also almost died twice. The First World War touches us still but for those making film during, after and about the conflict in the silent era it was an act of personal and professional exegesis. Even in Hollywood some had fought in the war, William Wellman and Richard Arlen were both fighter pilots a decade before they made Wings, whilst in Europe, as you’d expect, connections were everywhere.

The styles of cinematic representation differed even then from the forensic neo-documentary approach of the British reconstruction films such as today’s Q Ships (1928) to the more dynamic and crafted approach of perhaps the first true war blockbuster, King Vidor’s extraordinary The Big Parade (1925).

A shoulder to cry on - Comradeship (1919)

There are no winners in war but today there were two films that stood out, Vidor’s film and, to the delight and surprise of a fair few, Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919) which was so deftly made it could have been made in California that year or ten years later in Ealing.

It’s so affecting that I’d like to demand both a re-screening as soon as possible as well as a Blu-ray and DVD release. I’m also agitating for a posthumous damehood for Peggy Carlisle who is excellent in the film and clearly one of the all-time great Scouse silent stars… they should get some stars for Mathew Street!

But first the Parade that was Big… this is a film that set the template for so much of what was to come from Wings, Hell’s Angels and All Quiet… right the way through to Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. The scene where John Gilbert, Karl Dane, Tom O'Brien and their company begin a slow walk in line with bayonets fixed through a forest littered with dead French soldiers is still unbearable tense. Slowly single soldiers fall, picked off by snipers, then two, then three as machine guns are trained on the men, then grenades and bigger guns… it is as if the real war is gradually being rolled out after a first half of comradeship and Gilbert’s character’s inevitable fall for the irresistibly-appealing Renée Adorée – the best leading actor in the film.

Renée Adorée 

Then, as even his closest buddies begin to fall, Gilbert is trapped in a crater with one of the Germans, he’s already fatally shot the man but, as with a dying animal, can’t deliver the coup de grâce… he gives the man a cigarette as he dies and, in an instinctive improvisation, pushes his face away repeatedly: he just cannot look at him.

There are a few moments of 1920’s artifice but whilst some might snigger as Adorée clings on desperately to Gilbert’s departing truck, the absolute panic as she searches for him as the thousands of soldiers depart is visceral and the way the soldiers can’t resist pawing at her an animalistic foretaste of the de-humanisation to come. The psychological impact of the war drives the story and that’s exactly why it still works so well: these people were far more familiar with the realities of war than us.

John Gilbert in the fight of his life...

It doesn’t get much more laudable than the second-highest grossing silent film ever and MGM’s biggest until they torched Atlanta 14 year’s later. Comradeship, however, was today’s revelation, the Stoll Company’s first feature film and one aimed at helping publicise the Comrades of the Great War; a post-conflict support group for ex-servicemen who, as King George V hoped, would keep alive the “splendid spirit” of the battlefield in peace time.

In Dr. Lucie Dutton’s fascinating introduction, she revealed that stage actress Lily Elsie, here making her only feature film appearance, donated her fee to the Comrades as did Louis Parker on who’s story the film is based, Director Elvey gave half his salary and Stoll 60% of box office receipts. It was a cause close to Oswald Stoll’s heart and even today the Stoll Foundation is active in supporting ex-service men.

Inventive mirrored shot of Lily Elsie in Comradeship (1919)

Elevy said that this story is “the finest I have ever read in my life and will make a very fine film…” not untypical enthusiasm for his current projects according to Lucie and it is indeed a fine story and one that entertains and engages and says so much about the period in which it was made. It’s an examination not just of the binary outcomes of the conflict but the deep impacts it left on the national psyche – the emotional elements are every bit as important as in The Big Parade.

Instead of John Gilbert we have Gerald Ames (whose teeth are not in the same league) as John Armstrong who runs a drapery in the small town of Melcombe, he is a pacifist at the start of the war but this will, of course, have to change – let’s hope we none of us ever have to go through the same moral calculations.

He is assisted in his shop by a fuzzy-haired blonde Peggy played by Peggy Carlisle who was all of 15 years old at the time and would become an Elvey regular after her cameo in Lloyd George she would feature in The Rocks of Valpre (1919) – screened at the British Silent Film Festival in 2015 – as well as the lost Keeper of the Door (1919) and the superlative Hindle Wakes (1928). She’s a terrific presence in this film and has to do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting after being betrayed and left pregnant by a German spy, Otto (Dallas Cairns) who also works as a cutter the store.

Peggy Carlisle by a happier tree

Otto busies himself taking pictures of key landmarks and, after events escalate, he leaves with a note saying he will return as John’s master (we relay don’t like Otto). Local landowner Lieutenant Baring (the always watchable Guy Newall) always suspected Otto but the draper gave him the benefit of the pacifist's doubt.

John meets Baring’s cousin, the elegant Betty Mortimer (Lily Elsie) and it’s respectful-love-for -one’s-betters at first sight. After war breaks Betty decides to turn their home, Fanshawe Hall, into a wounded soldiers' hospital and she also takes in Peggy after her step-mother disowns her.

There are some excellent exterior shots in this film – Elvey always has that and it adds so much “volume” to his best films – with cinematographer Paul Burger excelling with some prize shots of Peggy set against a row of trees, her movement making her anguish clear even from a distance; she is alone and in need of friends like Betty.

Peggy Carlisle, Gerald Ames and Teddy Arundell

John goes to war and meets up with a fine fellow called Ginger (Teddy Arundell) a proto-Karl Dane who plays the accordion badly but will always stick with his pals. On leave he rescues Peggy from assault and they begin a tentative relationship whilst, at the same time, John sees Betty give a locket to Baring and jumps to the wrong conclusions.

Back in the war, the chums have a fateful encounter with Otto and as Gerald returns blinded and peace is declared, it seems his chances of happiness and purpose have disappeared for good. But this is when comradeship comes to the fore and I wasn’t the only one wiping something from my eye as steadfast humanity endures.

Some felt at the time that the film had come too late but fascinating shots of German artillery in the Mall – there for children’s delight and as proof of victory – along with the plot concerning the Comrades of the Great War, would have been very important to a society in shock: who was really celebrating in 1918-19? Society needed to be seen to be standing tall.

Offering help and comfort for the 800,000 disabled ex-servciemen

There’s also a very deft conclusion with Elvey making like Lubitsch with a close-up of just Betty and Gerald’s hands: will they, won’t they… you’ll have to watch and find out!

Meg Morley accompanied, fresh off the plane from Australia and her playing was soulful and naturally so supportive. Her next trick was to transform herself into John Sweeney some two-thirds of the way through the Anglo-German A Romance of the Great Battle of Jutland/Die Versunkene Flotte (1926). Their change-over was seamless and John followed Meg’s lines; total pros these guys!

This film was a fascinating mix of military drama and tangled romance with Agnes Esterhazy’s Erica choosing German naval commander Barnow (Bernahrd Goetke) over his best pal, Royal Naval captain Dick (Henry Stuart). War breaks out and they determine to remain friends even as Barnow commits himself to his men’s lives. Erica is sorely tempted by Lt Arden (handsome charmer Nils Asner), and spills the beans on the eve of the Battle of Jutland as the greatest navies in the World prepare for the defining sea battle of the Great War. Jutland was a “score-draw” despite heavier British losses, that showed the Germans they had no chance of winning outright given the resources and size of the Royal Navy: after Jutland the Germans accepted that they had been contained as a surface fleet.

The SMS Szent István sinks 

It is very well done and features extensive found-footage from the conflict including the capsizing of the Austrian battleship SMS Szent István in 1918… which adds extra reality with the horrific sight of hundreds of figures swimming away from the massive hull as it rolls over.

Kings College's Dr Lawrence Napper introduced and said that this, mostly German production was part of a process of more balanced relationships between the former enemies, by this stage the Germans are recognised as men with honour as well as ruthless efficiency.

Lawrence also introduced Q Ships (1928), a more typical battle reconstruction film, directed by Geoffrey Barkas and Michael Barringer for New Era Films (an offshoot of British Instructional Films) which showed the role of armed cargo ships in entrapping German U-Boats. After Jutland the prospect of another great face-off between battleship-led fleets diminished and submarines became the key German naval weapon as they attempted to interrupt supplies to the Allies. There’s very little fictional drama and the focus was very "procedural" as they tried to show the actuality. Admiral Lord Jellicoe – who commanded the British fleet at Jutland – even features in the film to add authenticity and it was not uncommon for former combatants to be featured.

Even the mud was imported in the quest for accuracy and authentic ships and weaponry was used along with narratives based on actual medal-winning events. The films were “memory spectacles” for old troops who would watch them on the afternoons of Remembrance Sunday.

John Sweeney played his own respects with accompaniment that let the story breathe as the Brits chased an enemy submarine.

Oooh, Q-Ships is on Grapevine DVD

There were also three sections compiling shorter films: in America at War: Hollywood in the Air, Kevin Brownlow talked through his interviews with Colleen Moore in relation to Lilac Time, the film she made with Gary Cooper and, mostly, William “Wild Bill” Wellman on Wings which left me wanting to watch that film again on the big screen. After The Big Parade, Wings was another blockbuster and Howard Hughes was watching, again and again as he put together Hell’s Angels.

Hollywood on the Ground had Glenn Mitchel and Dave Wyatt introducing a mixed bag of which my favourite was Pearl White’s Pearl of the Army (1916) – it may be incomplete but it shows how one of the pioneers of women in action adventure films worked. There were also some classy comic cuts from Harry Langdon, Natalie Kingston and Vernon Dent in All Night Long (1924).

As a treat, Colin Sell accompanied these two segments and showed that he may well have had some previous experience… only “Samantha” knows for sure and she’ll never tell!

Lastly there were shorts from this side of the pond with Europe at War which included a fascinating single reel of a Herbert Brenon feature in which the Germans invade Chester. Victory and Peace (1918) came too late and was dogged by bad-luck and self-sabotage and so only this one reel survives: it’s powerful in its way as the city is bombed and children die – but propaganda that was simply after the show. You can watch the film for free on the BFI Player.

Nurse and Martyr (1915) was a highly-propagandist take on the execution of Edith Cavell featuring the rather too glamourous Cora Lee in the lead and an unknown actor as Elsa, a no-mark German who blames Cavell for her own failings and gets revenge by selling her out. An unnecessary addition to the story which, as the Fifeshire Advertiser noted, will “touch the heart of a nation… the British ‘Joan of Arc’…”

Edith (Cora Lee)  is betrayed by evil Elsa

Congratulations and thanks to all at the Bioscope and Cinema Museum who make these days possible. At the end Michelle Facey reminded us of the main importance of these films: “we shall not forget” those who sacrificed all for their country in a war that finished a century ago but which shaped the Twentieth Century and beyond.

Love and disorder.... The Mating Call (1928), Bioscope with Costas Fotopoulos

Oh Evelyn, you’re incorrigible, Renée, you’re adorable and Thomas, my Meighan, you’re faultless as well: what a good cast and what an interesting film The Mating Call proves to be. There’s proto-screwball, with Brent providing the template for Lombard and Hepburn to follow, shocking skinny dipping (really) and a KKK-type body known as The Order who dispense local justice for local people with all the due diligence of the Kray Twins.

James Cruze directed and some fella name of Howard Hughes produced a film that was as brave in its subject matter as his previous film with Meighan, The Racket, which dealt with the thorny topic of Al Capone and the Mob who no doubt took as close an interest in their fictional representation as the KKK who then numbered some four million members across American society.

Thomas Meighan - maybe more Mitchum than Wayne on second thoughts...

There are similarities between the two films beyond the criminal clubs with Meighan playing a fine, upstanding Irish American having to contend with smartly-assertive women. Brent’s character is a flirt, a manipulator but true to herself in much the same way as Marie Prevost in The Racket: she knows what she wants and she’s not going to apologise for wanting to get it. Louise Brooks may have famously referred to Brent as like an arctic roll but this is a warm-hearted performance that whilst not a million miles away from Feathers is the polar opposite of the long-suffering big-sis she played in Love ‘em and Leave ‘em – her breakthrough film with Brooksie.

She and Meighan have a great chemistry especially when he’s manhandling her into her car and away from his libido as she tries to wrap herself around him.

Brassy?

Against brassy-Brent we have the Gallic charms of Renée Adorée… or do we? In a shock announcement (to me anyway) Tony Fletcher revealed that not only was she born in Germany her father was a British music hall performer – she played down the German connection to become Renee from Lille. This is a story indeed as even Wiki and IMDB have this wrong and I look forward to Tony screening his documentary on the actress at the Bioscope.

Whatever her origin – British, really? – the woman had skill and here is able to act herself out of the un-promising scenario of being a bride for hire at Ellis Island immigration in a story line so modern it hurts: these people coming over to our country and upsetting the Clan etc. She melts into the frame in contrast to Evelyn’s bolder intrusions (as Brooks said, her opening gambit was often to adopt The Stance and fire forth…) and even with a relatively limited amount of screen time – a lot happens – she wins sympathy and also convinces as a romantic partner for Thomas M who is about as romantically convincing as John Wayne.

Renée not from Lille

The plot? Thomas Meighan plays Leslie Hatton who, whilst serving as an officer in the war, marries his village sweetheart Rose (Evelyn Brent) before returning to the front. After the war he returns eager to commence married life only to find that Rose parents have annulled the marriage on the grounds of their daughter’s youth (eh?) and that she has married businessman and serial philanderer Lon Henderson (Alan Roscoe).

Lon and Rose were made for each other and share the same desire to absolutely be with someone else as often as possible. Rose still carries a candelabra for Mr Hatton whilst Lon’s carrying on with young Jessie (Helen Foster) and moonlighting as a leading light in The Order, dressing up in black hoods (not white: black) in order that The Order may maintain order.

The exterior shots are well made.

All this is too much for Les who decides that the only way to get Rose out of his hair – and everywhere else, you should see the way she applies her perfume… saucy is not the word… is to claim he’s already re-married. He hasn’t but this is where he does a deal with Renée Adorée’s Catherine and her family: room and board in exchange for marriage.

Not a promising start to any relationship but, but… once you’ve seen Catherine cook breakfast, bath a piglet and, astonishingly, swim around with fewer clothes than Hedy Lamarr five years later… you’ll understand why the big lug falls for her.

But… there will be other complications too complicated to mention here: a suicide, some incriminating letters, the Order flogging to the wrong conclusions and much more.

The Order keep order

The film was believed lost for many years and shows the developments in story and performance that would morph into the “pre-code” talkies although here the images carry more weight than dialogue would have allowed…

Kevin Brownlow introduced reading from an essay full of his personal recollections of the film makers – he’s a personal emissary from the era that transfixes us.

Will Rogers and his ropin'

For the opening session Kevin showed us a fun film about lassoing starring Will Rogers in the self-depreciatingly entitled The Ropin’ Fool (1922). The film showed Will’s tricks in real time and then in slow motion and his ability to throw a rope under a horse to lasso its rider has to be seen to be believed. Rogers seems quite the character saying if folk didn’t like the film, he’d grow a beard, pretend to be German and they’d call it “art”.

The things dropped back a few millennia for a double-dose of Ben Hur… and what a difference two decades can make. The original Ben from 1907 was shot from a static camera which failed to capture even the majesty of a few horses against a painted backdrop whereas the 1925 is genuinely epic in a way that still stands against its CGI-drenched remake.

Mass spectacle in 1907...

Kevin showed the whole of the chariot race which still thrills on the big screen with a dust-mote sunshine depth of field as Ramon Navarro and Francis X Bushman are filmed amongst the chaos. It’s the knowledge that they and the actual riders, horse and crew where in a genuinely perilous environment that makes the contest gripping.

But not everything in the huge arena was as it seemed, the upper tiers of the Circus Maximus were formed of small figures hand-operated to create the effect of a living crowd with the camera shooting the models close-up to give the seamless effect seen on screen.

...and in 1925!

Costas Fotopoulos accompanied The Mating Call with classical flourishes and Meg Morley was on hand to musically-enhance the evening’s opening section (Carl Davis too, although not in person).

Another enlightening evening in Kennington – thank you to all at the Bioscope.

The Lillian Gish method… La Bohème (1926)

It’s easy to be condescending in your reaction to silent film… but distance in time doesn’t disable the skill and audaciousness of its creators and all cliché is dismantled when you look hard enough...

Decades before de Niro, Christian Bale and others made an art form out of physical deprivation in support of their roles, Lillian Gish was doing the same. To prepare for the tragic ending of this story (c’mon it’s from the opera by Puccini, what do you expect?) she visited sanitaria to study tuberculosis patients in order to learn how to breath with minimal movement of the rib cage. Then she starved herself of food and water for the three days before she shot the ending…

John Gilbert and Lillian Gish

Director King Vidor, said that he feared that it might be the end of her life as well as her character’s and it is genuinely shocking to watch her frail last moments as she hauls herself across Paris to meet her lover for the last time. It could be horribly melodramatic but she transcends this with conviction and incredible physical bravery. Why was she doing this? I was reminded of Emil Janning’s physical transformation in The Last Laugh but that was just acting... the knowledge that she weakened herself -risking her health – shows a level of professional commitment way beyond the norm.

Maybe she felt the need to make a statement as in some quarters her characterisations were staring to be seen as old hat. Herbert Howe, for instance, wrote in Picture Play magazine that, “When Lillian Gish now appears you know she is due for a beating. . . A Society for the Prevention of Screen Cruelty to Lillian Gish should be organized."

Yet Gish's method acting ensures a suitably grand climax to this operatic tale. With no music to emphasis the tragedy, she had to make the images convey the full force and, everyone else, including John Gilbert, is simply in support.

Gish picked the best rising talent she could to make this film after seeing early cuts of King Vidor’s magnificent The Big Parade. Vidor was to direct with his stars John Gilbert and Renée Adorée with the likeable Karl Dane also involved.

The story is set in 1830 and shows the lives and loves of a group of bohemians living in the service of their art in a tumbledown house in the Latin Quarter. Gilbert plays the would-be playwright, Rodolphe, who, in order to pay the rent writes stories about cats and dogs for a pet-fancier’s journal. His room mate is a struggling artist, Marcel (Gino Corrado) and their group is completed by down at heel musician Schaunard (George Hassell) and writer Colline (Edward Everett Horton).

Their landlord constantly chases them for rent but they just about make ends meet and their diet is enlivened by the occasional windfalls of Marcel’s girlfriend Musette (Renée Adorée) who lives downstairs in rather more salubrious circumstances… the source of her income is more than hinted at.

Renée Adorée and John Gilbert

Alongside the bohemian’s room is that of a lonely lace maker and embroiderer, Mimi (Gish) who has only her pet bird for company. It’s almost too pitiful but not in the hands of Gish who, even in her thirties could carry off “innocent battler”…she’s believable and not just dramatic.

The landlord wants her out and she is saved by the scheming Vicomte Paul (Roy D’Arcy, relishing the in the villainy) who has more than her fabric in mind… He starts to commission work form her just so he can stay close and work out a way of having his evil way…

Meanwhile Mimi meets Rodolphe and the two fall in love. Mimi encourages the writer to work on his first play and starts to sacrifice herself for him especially after he loses his work at the journal and she has to work nights to get the money to make him think he’s still employed… nothing must come in the way of his work.

Mimi and Rodolphe forget the food

We move from winter to spring and Vidor gives us another of his famous external sequences as the friends enjoy a day out in the countryside and Rodolphe and Mimi perform a wonderfully-shot dance amidst the trees. Nature boy and nature girl…

But this bucolic bliss cannot last and Rodolphe’s jealousy drives a wedge between him and Mimi. He forgives her when realising how ill she has become in supporting him, but as he races off for a doctor Mimi runs away. She doesn’t want him to care for her at the expense of his play.

Rodolphe searches frantically but cannot find his love. This drives him on to finish his play and, thanks to Mimi’s earlier networking on his behalf, it becomes a great success. As Rodolphe and the friends celebrate, Mimi is drawn back to him for one final farewell…

Opera libretto’s rarely a good film do make but Gish performs with such force that this one works... She is aided by the superb flowing direction of Vidor who also seems to have pretty much let her get on with it. Gilbert is engaging as the charming but slightly obtuse Rodolphe although he is less effective as the drama ramps up. Renée Adorée is under-used but has some good dramatic moments, especially towards the end.

It’s Gish’s film, as it was always going to be, giving a lie, yet again to Louise Meyer’s assertion that tragic endings do not great careers make. Hollywood caught up with her in the end but Gish ploughed her own furrow through her incredible long life.

La Bohème in available from Warner Archives in decent quality and with a sprightly new score.

Happy Birthday Lillian!