Forde every stream… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Four

Tonight’s special was Pêcheur d'Islande (1924) with accompaniment from Gabriel Thibaudeau and Frank Bockius (again) and I wonder if it is possible that in future years we will look back on this GCM as The Bockius Edition, so involved has the percussionist been in the screenings I have enjoyed the most as well as this accompaniment; excellent interplaying, spirited lines and improvisation.

As for the codfish, I suppose someone had to make a film about the fragile mortality and crashing uncertainty of the Bretton fishermen in the Icelandic sea, the anguished weeks and months for those at home waiting for loved ones to return as other members of the family were despatched in colonial wars or just dropped dead off camera; the sheer uncertainty of life on the edge, extrapolated in visceral ways on screen, making the point with the bluntest instruments of cinematic convention being used to generate expectation - hopes raised not once, not twice but three times - before finally jabbing the audience right on the nose. Pêcheur d'Islande is that film. As the advertising had it at the time, it’s an “…affirmation of crushing fatalism which brings to the scale of the elements our humble and proud humanity.”

 

The film looks a dream and there are fabulous performances from Charles Vanel, Sandra Milovanoff (see above), Roger San Juana and Madame Boyer, yet the fatalism crushes the film relentlessly. The tragedy was not earned, it was imposed.

  

Mabel resists Ford's crushing fatalism

And yet, only a few hours ago I was so happy… The morning saw a top-quality slapstick session and you just get the warm giggles the second you see a line up of Mabel Normand, Mack Sennet and yes, even Ford Sterling. The gang are At Coney Island (1912) and are probably making things up on the spot with Mabel shining brightest. The same can be said for Harold Lloyd and his practically perfect From Hand to Mouth (1919) two-reels that pack as much in as Gance of von Stroheim did over ten – well, certainly more gags. Harold’s going hungry and gets caught up in  trying to save a young girl (his first film with future wife, Mildred Davies) and her inheritance. There’s bent lawyers out to cheat her and Snub Pollard out to kidnap her with only one hungry Harry and his instant wit to help her; they don’t stand a chance!

 

What can I say about the man who went on to direct Arthur Askey, a Liverpool-born funster of World-historic proportions, in The Ghost Train (1941)?

 

Walter Forde’s last silent film is packed with inventive routines: a baby and a doll mix up in the toy store, serving up toy soldiers just like chips on newspaper with oil for gravy and trying to wrap balloons in brown paper for a bespectacled Rees-Mogg-model junior toff. Forde’s an inventor, he’s not sure what of, but it seems to work until it blows his landlord’s house up. He gets a job in a toy shop and meets an attractive young woman Pauline (Pauline Johnson) who just happens to work for the War Office, he invites her for dinner cooked by his uppity roommate, Cuthbert (Arthur Stratton) who, in a constant battle of wills, refuses to act the role of his butler.

 

Walter making a right pig's ear of things

Walter’s invention of a remote-control tank could be a game-changer but a group of spies finds out and set’s off to stop him demonstrating the kit to the Minister for War. Their leader is modelled on a similar mastermind in Fritz Land’s Spies and sits at a huge desk, pushing buttons for everything he needs, drinks, photographs, cigarette and lighters… There’s a very funny bit of business on the Underground as the baddies chase Walter up lifts and down emergency spiral staircases in scenes reminiscent of Keaton in The Cameraman and elsewhere. The gags are mostly good and Forde lets things flow without over-extending his ideas, no wonder he worked so well with Big-Hearted Arthur.

 

He gets his chance to demo for the Minister but the enemy agents kidnap him and Pauline, and, as Walter pushes his pal Cuthbert too far, the real-life tank runs amok to comic effect. The filmmakers were clearly delighted to get the loan of kit and crew and have the crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Hurry up Harry!

Harry Piel’s taken some stick at the Festival for his repetitions and improbably plotting – but things mostly came together for the epically daft Rivalen (1923) in which we finally got to see his acting as well as his directing and writing. Piel is dynamic and eye-catching with Fairbanks wit and physicality  allied to Houdini-esque escapology with one section in which he is lowered into a lake in a glass pyramid and then seen in a studio tank struggling to escape.

 

It's possible that the film was a sequel to Das schwarze Kuvert as well as being followed by Der letzte Kampf according to Hemma Marlene Prainsack and Andreas Thein in the programme notes. That would make sense of the bad blood between Piel’s character Peel (see what they did there?) and the evil Dr Ravello (Charly Berger) – he’s got a robot! – and the fact they’re both pursuing the same woman, rich industrialist John Evans’ daughter Evelyn (Inge Helgard). The pace has the relentlessness of a serial and the outlandish sci-fi plot barely makes sense nor does it need to.

 

I loved the “Heaven and Hell” masked ball with the theme, held in Evans’ castle with lots of Teutonic debauchery and outrageous set designs from Hermann Warm who worked on Caligari and Albert Korell. It provided and interesting contrast with the even more spectacular work of the French Sonia Delaunay who is also being highlighted during the festival.

 

Accompaniment was from Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius – The Man Who Never Sleeps – and they lifted the film and the fun with their swinging affinity.

 

Fishing about on the river

No greater contrast could be found than in the long-lost documentary, Amazonas, Maior Rio Do Mundo (1918) which was only rediscovered this year and even made the news in The Guardian. It’s a fascinating document of the life and importance of the huge waterway which revealed hitherto unknown details about Brazil Nuts – they’re encased in fruit!? – as well as rubber and mahogany. Vegetarians and omnivore’s alike looked away for the scenes of manatee hunting but at least they killed what they ate. It reminded me of the basking shark hunt filmed by Flaherty for Man of Aran only real. A window into the past that was seemingly shattered exists again.

 

Accompaniment was from José María Serralde Ruiz and it was definitely Amazon prime!

 

Mack and Mabel provided my third trip to Coney Island in a few weeks after Eleanor and James in The Crowd (BFI) and Clara and Antonio in It (Kennington Bioscope). They used to say it was The Playground of the World, a bit like Blackpool… and that’s exactly where we’re headed tomorrow on Wakes Wednesday! I can not wait!

I want you to crush him, fatalistically!

Play for today… Les Misérables (1925-6), Neil Brand, The Barbican

Today was the London Marathon, one film lasting 359 minutes and one piano being played by one man for the whole length: all the right notes, in all the right order with just a couple of breaks for re-hydration and ice-pack application to wrists and brow. By sheer coincidence elsewhere in the capitol there were 40,000 people running 26 miles and 385 yards through its streets. Some were dressed in costumes but most finished in less than five hours and not a single one was playing the piano… For cinemutophiles there could be only one winner and Mr Brand was cheered to the rafters as the long day closed in triumph.

This is one of the most extraordinary silent cinematic experiences you can have this side of Napoleon or a rediscovered first cut of Greed but Les Misérables has its own tone and holds the audience in different ways. It might not be for everybody but so well does it tells its tale by the closing segment you are mourning even relatively minor characters some of whom had not even been “goodies”: shades of grey.

It's a film rich in texture and brave enough to travel at almost reading pace through substantial chunks of its source narrative. There are impressive - almost fleeting – exterior shots that link to the interior shots where most of the story is told; actual locations are used such as the Le Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris along with ancient streets that would pre-date the rebuilt Paris of Naopleon III, but these are used so sparingly in favour of more detailed character-based exposition.

The occassional outdoors

There’s an impressive shot of Gabriel Gabrio who plays grand anti-hero Jean Valjean, seemingly driving a racing carriage but that’s about as close as director Henri Fescourt gets to Gance. It’s a deliberate steering away from the visceral: the anti-Abel.

The sets are opulent and elaborate all the same but the focus is on those fascinating faces who emote the narrative and, over the course of over six hours viewing you grow accustomed to them: like someone else’s life flashing in front of your face…

Even the mis-en-scene and props reflect these players, connecting with their interior lives and intimacies. Valjean’s stick and his stolen candles, that leave him beholden to the forgiving Monseigneur Myriel or the doll he gifts to Cosette which represents both her lost mother and her lost childhood: “play” he keeps on insisting when she is rescued from the slavery of the Thénardier family. Her broken-heeled clog lies empty at the fireplace on Christmas, even after all she has endured, she still hopes for Santa but only Valjean can provide the gift she needs. He keeps those clogs for the rest of his life…

Jean Toulout, Sandra Milovanoff and Gabriel Gabrio argue a point

But none of this would work if the performances were not so impressive. Gabrio is a man mountain of fearsome intent who is so is initially so resilient to goodness you can’t fail to route for his turning. The woman who helps to soften his heart is played by the supernaturally-expressive Sandra Milovanoff who is able to convey both fragility and strength with equal conviction though piercing eyes and a protean physicality. Cosette, the daughter she leaves in the care of the abusive Thénardiers, is played by Andrée Rolane who is especially impressive in the gothic scenes in which she is forced into the night to fetch water from a forest alive with shadowy wolves, evil trees and ghostly threats: like Mary Pickford in Sparrows only a third of the age.

Andrée Rolane

Cosette grows up to be played by Milovanoff again who eventually falls for the gentile Marius (François Rozet) who inspite of being a bit of a self-indulgent fop (actor and character) also attracts Éponine Thénardier – a street-smart petty criminal played really well by Suzanne Nivette; all feral calculation and fearlessness, willing to fight even her own venal father;  a Waterloo-grave robber turned blackmailer played with cowardly malice by Georges Saillard.

The thieves are bad but the police are almost worst, Jean Toulout’s Javert is an almost psychotically-driven believer in the back and the white…

 
I have dabbled with Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert but, shamefully, I have to confess that I have not read Hugo and nor have I watched any of the 50 or so adaptations of this book – not even the long-running musical or film of the same. I therefore experience this all for the first time without preconception, my “Fantine” Hathaway-free.

Charles Badiole is also good as Gavroche, revolutionary urchin

As with elements of von Stroheim’s Greed, this film felt like an adaptation especially with the odd narrative leap made, possibly, with the assumption that the audience of the time knew he story. But its focus on characterisation over narrative perfection is the saving grace and you care about Marius’ monarchist grandfather Monsieur Gillenormand in the end as you do the lovelorn Éponine who does right even in death by the man she loves but who loves another… even, maybe, the conflicted policemen Javert who simply cannot compute the good that his badman target has done… it’s as if he can’t live with the uncertainty this creates: redemption is simply too much for him to accept.

David Robinson, in his notes for the 2015 Pordenone screening, quotes Victor Hugo about this ever-present possibility of turning a bad life good, for the author redemption is “…a  progress  from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth,  from  night  to  day,  from  appetite  to  conscience,  from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God”.

Gabriel Gabrio as Jean Valjean with his trusty walking stick/cudgel

This was the third time Neil had accompanied the restoration and his playing relaxed with the story; as in any marathon you need to pace yourself and there’d be time for the sprint finish later once the barricades went up and the cannons started going off. There were so many poignant phrases and a carefully constructed tempo that was both coherent and free-flowing. This is a very unusual film experience and Mr Brand saw it all coming without giving anything away in a masterclass of matched rhythm and sentiment.

At times there were measured notes filled with all the atmospheric spaces of Keith Jarrett which would then give way to huge, crashing, broken-hearted chords as two hearts meet and a third is broken, or faith is betrayed and anger rules hearts beaten down by an unforgiving state that rewards the “snitches”, the gossips and cruel-hearts in general.

Big themes and Neil provided the improvisations to match:  churlish to ask for an encore (I did) but you should not miss the chance to see him go again in Cambridge later this year. I’ll post details when they’re confirmed you really don’t want to miss this!

The Barbican Cinema 1 was over two thirds full and it’s a shame some missed out; if you are interested in silent film this is one of those events you will treasure: anyone can play a DVD in their sitting room but very few can play the piano for so many waking hour dreamers.

Credit to the Barbican for putting the show on and I hope there are more opportunities to view this stunning restoration in such a setting. Even the title card translations were inserted live as the print only came with French; another marathon, another world record!

Souvenir booklet from 1925