When Erich met Irving... Merry-Go-Round (1923), Flicker Alley Blu-ray

  

“…inexcusable and repeated acts of insubordination… extravagant ideas which you have been unwilling to sacrifice… and your apparent idea that you are greater and more powerful than the organization that employs you.”

Irving Thalberg’s letter of termination to Erich von Stroheim

I’d seen the new restoration of this film at last year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone but sometimes in the rush of a festival you don’t always pick up everything about a film, especially one with such a complicated backstory as this. According to von Stroheim biographer Richard Koszarski in his book-length audio commentary, Erich spent something like 33 days directing the film, 20-25% of the total according to the accounts of Universal’s new Head of Production, Irving Thalberg, who fired him and Rupert Julian who replaced him and yet this film could hardly be more “Von”.

 

Koszarski quotes from the meticulous diaries of James Winnard Hum who was sent to man-mark the Austrian spendthrift by Thalberg, a 24-year-old “Boy Wonder” who was busily turning Universal into a business with a command-and-control structure that was not going to co-exist with the old ways of director-led films. Thalberg had more to offer than just a belief in budgets and schedules but having already had to intervene on the director’s over-spent Foolish Wives (1922), when von Stroheim wanted to keep on shooting, was not going to allow him to risk Universal’s financial well-being not matter how “inspired” the ideas. Foolish Wives had been a smash but maybe studios will one day learn that Thalberg’s creative due diligence was a necessary counterbalance to unfettered and expensive creativity.

 

So, enter Mr Julian, a director badly in need of a hit and who would later claim more of the film’s ideas as his own than were his due. Koszarski reads out von Stroheim’s script outline during his commentary and it’s quite clear that not just the story but the shooting instructions were followed pretty faithfully with the result that the film, with most of the original cast and crew intact, carries the hallmarks of its author and original director.

 

This means a film that is marked by the harshness of certain characters and the cruel fate of others all against a backdrop of a fantasy Viennese noble demimonde that von Stroheim convinced everyone was his too. The extremes of the characters’ backgrounds makes the cruelty all the more painful as fairground organ grinder Agnes Urban (Mary Philbin) is forced to keep on playing just as her mother is breathing her last by her monstrous boss, Huber (George Siegmann). This is further contrasted with her soft-focus flirting with handsome Count Franz Maxmilian von Hohenegg (Norman Kerry) who has the luxury of visiting her incognito feigning to be a necktie salesman.

 

The Count’s life is unreal as a matter of course though, marked by duty and ritual that obscures feelings and curtails freedom. He is due to be married to the daughter of the Minister of War (Spottiswoode Aitken), the Countess Gisella von Steinbruck (Dorothy Wallace) in a decision Emperor Francis Joseph (Anton Vaverka) has decided is in everyone’s best interests. All of this is far from the carefree Count’s mind as he slums it in Vienna’s playground, the Prater amusement park, and seeks out its main attraction, the Merry-Go-Round.

 

The film opens with a mix of stock shots of Vienna showing the gothic history, the night life and the sordid underbelly as a young mother says goodbye to her son and throws herself off a bridge into the Danube. Then we join the Count as he shakes off a luxury hangover care of his manservants’ attentions including a risqué glimpse of the Kerry derriere which caused issues with the censors – more so, according to Koszarski, than the sexual violence later in the story. You can always count on the moral arbiters to miss the real point can’t you?

 

Life is so different for the workers at the Prater fairgrounds with Huber treating everyone, including his wife Marianka (the great Dale Fuller!), who he pointedly gives a tiny portion of his meal to, not to mention Agnes and her father Sylvester (Cesare Gravina who will later play alongside her in The Man Who Laughs) as they try to care for Ursula, his wife, her mother, who is in the last stages of serious illness.

 

The visit of the handsome stranger lifts Agnes spirits and, given the poverty of her life, the comparison with his true status is almost comical still wheel of fortune wheel of fire… the Merry-go-Round if life and just in case we’re not sure about the cyclical nature of fate and despair, every so often a silver0skinned devil appears laughing over a carousel spinning helplessly below.

 

The pathos is broad-brush but the finesse of the cruelty is such that this is merely another tragicomic aspect of the hopeless duality of love, life and grinding duty. I really don’t know exactly how socialist von Stroheim was but this critique of naked greed and careless class couldn’t be more on point for the times. He may be mourning a “lost Vienna” but not if it was this unfair.

 

And still comes the misery, Nicki (Charles King) is Agnes’ friend, and he loves her even though his deformity and humped back preclude her romantic interest – in his mind at least. He has an orangutang which is his livelihood, but also a friend who looks at Huber with savage eyes (no less than the rest of us). He watches in anguish as she falls for the handsome Franz as there is nothing he could or would do to stop it.

 

The greatest indignity of all awaits Agnes when, inevitably, the truth will out and she endures a humiliation in front of her “betters” and her father that is difficult to watch. This is as intended by von Stroheim but the director of 75-80% of the film deserves a lot of credit for largely taking script, cast and crew and making the film in the uncompromising fashion we identify with his predecessor.

 

There are also some very fine performances on screen and is this the best Mary Philbin role? She’s full on committed and never really crosses over the line towards purely melodramatic being believable sad and humiliated and in love all at the same time. Cesare Gravina is so intense and has just the face for this kind of gothic tale in which the cavernous depths of man’s everyday cruelty to man are ultimately compared with the First World War. Norman Kerry is, of course, a big lunk, but that’s what the role demands and many a better actor would struggle to complete his story arc… you have to see it!

 

The restoration features a newly commissioned orchestral score composed and conducted by Robert Israel, which contributes greatly to the emotional vibrancy of the cast and story and it’s a very rewarding watch and re-watch.

  

The restoration is fabulous and there’s an extra looking at it in more detail and much more:

 

·         Audio Commentary by Richard Koszarski - Go behind the scenes of the troubled production and explore Merry-Go-Round’s incredible filmic legacy with an in-depth commentary track from cinematic historian Richard Koszarski

·         Vienna Actualities - Explore Vienna in the years before World War I with 17 minutes of historical footage, courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria

·         Old Heidelberg (1915) - A new restoration of a feature from director John Emerson and producer D.W. Griffith, which served as an influence on Merry-Go-Round and also boasts Erich von Stroheim’s very first acting role

·         Restoring Merry-Go-Round - Go behind the scenes of the brand-new restoration with film restorer Serge Bromberg

·         Photo Galleries - Production stills, publicity, and other rare documentation

·         Souvenir Booklet - Featuring a new essay on the production by Richard Koszarski and notes on the restoration by Serge Bromberg and Lucie Fourmont

·         English SDH Subtitles

·         Reversible Cover Artwork – always a bonus!

 

Full details are available on the Flicker Alley website and those that re-sell US Blu-rays to the UK. It’s a fascinating part of the changing face of Hollywood as well as being one of Erich’s best concepts brought to life with a little help from his “friends” Rupert and Irving!

Stage-coaching… The California Mail (1929), Kennington Bioscope with Cyrus Gabrysch

 

There were some outstanding shots – glorious panoramas of the rugged West, cameras placed beneath horses pounding hooves, above them from the vantage point of a stagecoach driver and even amongst them as a man fought to control their ferocity during a breath-taking race and chase. If this was the work of Abel Gance we would be in raptures but it was Albert S. Rogell and respect is due.

We were watching the world premier of a rediscovered lost film and Christopher Bird was projecting from the back row and risking his own copy – probably the only one left anywhere – albeit on his own projector through which it had already passed during testing. The film, projector and projectionist all passed the audition tonight and we saw something special as well as something unique.

The California Mail (1929) was projected from a 16mm archive print that had been made by transferring original filmic materials onto Gun Film which had been sold off cheaply by the RAF and yet was typically only twenty feet long meaning that the previous owner would have had to splice together something like 900-1000 times to make the complete 1800+ foot film – his labours have not been lost thanks to Mr Bird and the film is in the safest of hands.

The view from Chris's projector of The California Mail (pic Chris Bird)

Written by Marion Jackson and Leslie Mason the film tells the tale of attempts to find a safe route through to California for much-needed gold supplies during the dog days of the Civil War. The gang trying to stop the shipments is led by the very butch, “Butch” McGraw (C.E. Anderson) whose gang regularly ambush the Yankee shipments forcing the Union to run a contest to find the quickest stagecoach.

There’s a new member of Butch’s gang who has yet to prove himself name of Bob Scott (Ken Maynard) who after being despatched to capture the daughter of one of the town’s leaders, Molly Butler (Dorothy Dwan). He lifts her off her horse but then proceeds to take her back to safety. Butch sends “Rowdy” Ryan (Paul Hurst) to kill the duplicitous Bob but he’s more messy than rowdy and Bob spots him hiding in a barrel before convincing him it’s all part of his plan to get the stagecoach franchise so the gang can get tipped off.

First there has to be a three-way race-off to decide the best company to run the franchise and Bob takes the seat in the California Mail coach and after a genuinely thrilling and incredibly dangerous race – in which some horses might possibly have been injured – he prevails. This is where we see Maynard in between the horses pulling them back into position and definitely doing his own stunts. According to Chris he had been a trick rider with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Ringling Brothers’ circus, then later a champion rodeo rider with his horse Tarzan (the Wonder Horse!) – here acting under his own name and being the handsomest equine star this side of Trigger of Tonto.

Ken and Tarzan with a baby in Heir to Trouble (1935)

It's a very entertaining ride and I won’t spoil the final sequence which just has to be seen to be believed. Chris quoted Kevin Brownlow in saying that westerns are often not given the credit they deserve for the technique and skill involved in making them and this was one of those late silent films which not only showed the level of Hollywood filmmaking but, as David Thompson said, you could almost hear the voices ready for the coming of sound.

Once talkies had arrived Maynard added another string to his impressive bow by becoming the first Singing Cowboy. Cyrus Gabrysch – accompanying sight unseen – certainly made the Bioscope’s piano sing and galloped along in sync with man, woman and horse both on and off the screen as Mr Bird’s trusty projector provided a comforting whir behind us… only at The Bioscope amigos!

Sue Carol and Richard Walling

Walking Back (1928) was the first film of the evening and was another 16mm archive print from Chris Bird’s collection. It was directed by Rupert Julian for Cecil B. DeMille but there’s a strong likelihood that the latter was as involved in this as Lon Chaney was in Phantom of the Opera’s direction (as rumour has it and I like this rumour). There’s certainly some of Cecil’s trademark salacious male gaze (am I being unfair...? c.f. Sign of the Cross and many more…) but either way it’s a fast-paced fun ride with plenty of jazz energy!

Sue Carol, as flapper Patsy Schuyler certainly has It! and was understandably regarded as a potential Clara competitor for a while. She is exceptionally pretty but Clara had depth and range that drew a deeper engagement certainly based on this script which, in fairness, doesn’t give Sue much to do other than look good and support her man, one “Smoke” Thatcher – not a good nickname if he were to follow the family name and attach straw to cottage roofs… He’s played with considerable gumption by Richard Walling who is a rebel without much cause and also little clue.

That said, there are elements of a fifties/sixties generational drama with “reckless” kids doing battle with their misunderstanding parents. And I ask myself, just when did I start siding with the grown-ups?!

Sue Carol 

After an opening of drunken foolishness which sees one overloaded car crash off the road following a flat tyre caused by a smashed and very illicit whiskey bottle, the gaggle of flapper legs and male drunkenness leads the party to a café shortly followed by the police and a quick disposal of the hootch. Later on, there’s a party to which Smoke can take his “fire” Patsy but only if his father (Robert Edeson) will loan him his car. This doesn’t work and so Smoke borrows his neighbour’s car only to find that his rival Pet Masters (Arthur Rankin) has taken Patsy instead.

 

The two butt heads over Patsy and then, irresponsibly, smash their cars together in a demolition derby that is going to cost Smoke a lot in terms of money and paternal approbation. Still, it’s an energetic sequence and it’s better than watching Jeremy Clarkson do it. Finally with Patsy clinging on to his side Smoke upends his rival’s car and is declared the winner but at what a cost.

They take the ruined vehicle to a garage where the mechanic informs him that the borrowed car, now wrecked, has become a stolen car and his is the place the police will often look first. Smoke needs some money fast and as luck would have it there arrive three smartly dressed individuals who need someone to drive their Mercedes for a particular errand. Their true intent only gradually reveals itself to the rather dense Smoke as they park up outside his father’s bank intent on robbing it… OK, it’s not high art but it is great fun full of youthful jazz-age energy and great stunt driving. It’s a witty film with the tone set with one if the opening intertitles, 1928 – and how! – the shock of the old-new never fails to impress.

The boys try to win Patsy over...

Mordaunt Hall was even slightly moved, writing in The New York Times that the film was "… no worse than the general average of those dealing with wine, automobiles and the biological gropings of persons under the age of 24. As a matter of fact, it is a little better. Miss Carol, as Patsy, is pretty, and Mr. Walling, as Smoke, looks as though if he had the right opportunity to be intelligent, he might fool everyone."

 

Ashley Valentine proved that you could play the piano with jazz hands and thoroughly enjoyed accompanying this peppy entertainer. I especially like the hint of The Godfather theme when the gangsters arrive to make our heroes an offer they can’t refuse.

 

Another richly entertaining evening in Lambeth and I’m surprised that this kind of thing isn’t available on prescription by now. An absolute tonic!

Walking Back as viewed from the back (pic Chris Bird)

Dancing Queen… The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), with John Sweeney, Cambridge Film Festival

The Lois Weber revival continues and this year’s Cambridge Film Festival featured four films from a director increasingly rated alongside anyone in the second full decade of film. Dumb Girl is her blockbuster and is quite different from her social dramas like The Blot and Shoes even though it includes some intricate characterisations. But here we get the chance to see Weber with a big budget, Cabirian camera movement, close-ups, a full-scale revolution with a cast of thousands and a moving coda so cinematically-perfect it had me in bits.

Weber’s cinematic instincts are so different from, oh, let’s say Mr David Wark Griffith, and she creates narrative tension equally well with multiple tracks, gruesome horror (heads impaled on sticks?!) and a lighter melodramatic touch. Yes, there are problems with this film which sometimes sags but all is rescued by a dynamic closing half-hour.

Anna Pavlova

Part of this was due to John Sweeney’s masterful accompaniment. John has written the splendid score for the Milestone DVD set – which I’ve relished watching after this screening - but playing solo is a different proposition especially given the complexity of aligning music with movement. Mr Sweeney has much experience of ballet accompaniment but with a film the editing and cutting means that you the dance is not always on beat – with the exception of one set piece from the original opera/ballet, John improvised and does what he does, not just tracking the narrative but weaving around it, adding flexibility of his own that lifted the action scenes and otherwise intensified the drama of a rather long film: a master at work and the essence of top notch live silent film!

It’s Ballet Month here with a trip to see the Jasmin Vardimon Company’s Medusa at Sadler's Wells last week and an evening with my favourite company, Ballet Cymru, coming up this weekend as well as silent-Swedish prima Jenny Hasselqvist’s stunning show in the Pordenone screening of Mauritz Stiller’s Ballet Primadonna (1916).

Anna Pavlova and Douglas Gerrard

Queue Anna Pavlova and a film of the same vintage I’ve been waiting to see on screen for some time – one of the most famous ballerinas in history, one of silent film’s greatest directors, Lois Webber and of course maestro John Sweeney, no stranger to ballet let alone silent film.

Now, I barely know my brisé from my Birdy Dance but it is fascinating trying to understand this world of disciplined motion. Whereas Hasselqvist is all power, Pavlova is smaller and relies more on her famous grace. She was not the ideal physical type for late Nineteenth Century Ballet and evolved a style of her own using her physicality to the upmost as an asset. Biographer Therese Heckenkamp wrote in A Princess of Ballet, that the Russian prima " made the most of her slender frame and danced the way she was made to dance, moving gracefully, expressing emotion with her flexible body.”  

On the beach

Pavlova was also the first dancer of her standard to tour the world and no doubt helped to raise the profile of the art alongside establishing herself as something like a global superstar. By 1915 she was living in Britain and then found herself marooned in the USA by the War, where she toured extensively. She was offered $50,000 to star in a film version of the Opera she had been touring D.F. E. Auber’s 1829 La Muette de Portici and the funds were much appreciated given the struggles of that tour.

The story is set in the seventeenth century when Spain ruled most of Italy and an actual incident in 1647 when the local population, under the leadership of a humble fisherman named Masaniello, revolted against their overlords. Now Masaniello (here played by Rupert Julian) was described as “...a young man of twenty-seven, beautiful and graceful in appearance, his face was brown and somewhat burned by the sun: black eyes, blond hair, with locks that ran down his neck.” But the history books don’t mention whether he had a sister called Fenella or indeed whether she played a part in the revolt.

A well-read fisherman: Rupert Julian years before he directed The Phantom of the Opera

Here she does, a mute who expresses herself through the physicality of graceful dance, innocent energy and a smile to stir hearts and sink ships. Naturally this part was made for Pavlova and it’s hard to see anyone else in the role, certainly in this way… you need a lot of skill to reign in the physical signifiers… and some of the other cast members fail to follow suit and so sometimes the acting can be, shall we say, overly specific. The narrative can also be over-literal with brother Masaniello described as keen to improve himself and then seen deeply engrossed in a book on his return from fishing: surely reckless boats-manship on a par with texting at the wheel of a car?

Fenella dances for joy, and with see-weed, when her brother comes home and we see their small community in a set built right on the beach. Their simple lives, in which Fenella helps the suffering with her effervescence, contrasts with the ruling Spanish nobility who are imperious and indifferent. There’s a superb close-up shot from a camera mounted on their coach, as the Viceroy, Duke of Arcos (Wadsworth Harris) and his wife Isabella (Betty Schade) arrive and look on with distanced disdain at the locals; discontent is brewing…

Close up on the Viceroy and Mrs Viceroy as they respond to the locals' displeasure all around them

A young Spanish noble Alfonso (Douglas Gerrard) cares enough to find out why and goes off in disguise to learn more about the people; he finds Fenella and soon they are galivanting in woodland areas and staying up all night lost on love. The only trouble is that Alfonso is lined up to marry Elvira (Edna Maison) plus, he’s a Spanish nobleman and a spy…

Startlingly, we see more characterisation for Elvira – and several other women characters – than you might expect and, it does seem that Weber was more interested in adding depth to her women than many a male director, before or since. In the end too, Elvira and Fenella work together to prevent complete disaster (for some).

Meanwhile, the men wear huge black wigs and moustaches and they make war! Weber’s action scenes feature some outstanding camera mobility with a great tracking shot across dozens of men as they try to repel revolutionaries – I’ve tried to show the breadth of that take but it’s much better than the cut and paste shows.

The moving camera records and having recorded, moves on... and on.

Critic and film historian Daniel Eagan also points out that Weber’s lens is freed to follow Pavlova as she gracefully weaves her way through the film. The dancer’s schedule was such that over a lengthy shoot she was only available some days for an hour and so Weber had to catch as much of her as she could. It worked and whilst she does her best with an undercooked script there are some excellent set pieces at the beginning and the ending of the film.

The film was once eleven reels long but, even now at around two hours it’s uneven but all the same a magnificent record of two major artists work. Not as eye-popping as Intolerance nor as narratively-dynamic (or racist) as Birth, this is still an epic romp.

The Milestone DVD is a double set is available directfrom their site and includes a welter of extras: The Immortal Swan (1935) – “a record of her art and life”, Anna Pavlova Dancing, 1925, produced by Douglas Fairbanks along with Anna Pavlova in Newsreels and some fascinating Home Movies from the twenties. For anyone interested in dance as well as silent film it’s essential.

Pavlova died aged 49 in 1931, after an illness for which a possible cure could have prevented her continuing the dance: she declined as life was not worth it without her precious movement.

Nigel De Brulier plays a priest, later he was John the Baptist in Nazimova's Salome