Closer up... The Goose Woman (1925) with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

I’ve seen this film before but I’ve never really seen it until now. Sometimes in our eagerness to view a film we put up with substandard digital copies – legally of course – but in the end you will always pay, without hesitation, to watch something as splendid on screen as Louise Dresser. Tonight we were treated to the restored 35mm print courtesy of UCLA, Robert Gitt and Kevin Brownlow which featured far more content and clarity as well as the dramatic enhancements of Cyrus Gabrysch’s energetically complex accompaniment.

The Goose Woman is a very good silent film but what raises it to the level of exceptional is the performance of Miss Dresser as the woman for whom all vanity has dissolved. She’s caked in her disappointment as surely as her pigs are snout-deep in in the mud of her swampy small-holding.

Director Clarence Brown is no slouch either and there are very few moments in film as powerfully sad as the accidental destruction of the last recording of Dresser’s fallen opera singer Mary Holmes (once Marie de Nardi…) in her pomp. Placed on the table by her son, Gerald (Jack Pickford), Mary’s precious shellac rolls slowly from the kitchen table smashing on impact with the cruel stone floor. Having lost her voice giving birth to the unwanted boy now he – unintentionally – destroys her last memento… and her self-loathing simply won’t allow her to forgive him. She pushes him out and then finds that the gin bottle she’d hidden in the kettle has evaporated away… like her life.

There are many such symbolic moments showcasing the “Brown Touch” – Gerald’s interrogation by the police is punctuated by his nervous distraction at a dripping tap, one cop shuffling coins and another cracking nuts… You can only agree with what he said to Kevin Brownlow half a century ago when the latter showed him his copy: “I hadn’t realised I was that good!” Kevin also showed the film to Mary Pickford on one of her rare trips to London and she was impressed with brother Jack’s performance – thirty years after she lost him to alcoholism in 1933. It’s always a privilege to hear Mr Brownlow’s introductions – he is literally on first-name terms with silent cinema history.

Dresser wore very little make-up for the production, far less than Jack Pickford from the look of some scenes, and allowed herself to take her character to believable extremes. She relishes the degradation of a woman whose life has been destroyed by her failings and yet who has a sense of her own ridiculousness. She’s a drunk, she keeps geese, you got a problem with that?

Jack and Constance

Yet so much of her situation is down to her being judged – her pregnancy supposedly cost her voice but more likely it sank her in shame. When she reveals a terrible truth to Gerald about his parentage, we don’t see specifics just his reaction and that of his sweetheart Hazel (Constance Bennett, a star in waiting).

Things are about to get a whole lot worse as a rich neighbour is shot dead and through her gin-glasses Mary devises a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a fox: she’s going to reclaim her fame by pretending she saw the murder and show the world that she’s still Marie de Nardi! But as her fortunes begin to rise, the police inspector being a fan laps it up, she inadvertently puts Gerald right in the frame…

Brown handles these complications with such economy, the pay-off is superb, enabling his performers to slide through the narrative with the focus purely on their emotions. Of course he was Garbo’s favourite director: he let her breathe.

He also manages to infuse the story with humanity and comedy balanced against the dramatics. When Mary staggers off to find out what the murder scene looks like she’s pursued all the way by one of the geese… The animal in question is uncredited but she had an agent, you can be sure of that!

The pace of the film is deceptively unrelenting and Cyrus set the keyboard alight with classical flourishes as he bantered with Dresser and matched her note for note. The movie is richly toned – a gothic setting that influenced Sparrows – and this gave the pianist lots of room for rich textures of his own: all the stars were aligned on this one!

The packed house at the Bioscope burst into applause even as the credits started and deservedly so.

Earlier on we’d been treated to a couple of enjoyable oddities. The first was a dizzying compilation of railway “ghost shots” from Lyman H. Howe, Ride on a Runaway Train (1921),  which I hope never to see on Imax. The sequences showed some impossible angles and were sped up to create a disorientating feeling of being just in control… literally a rollercoaster of images and impossible railways!

Then there was watcher’s digest version of The Patent Leather Kid (1927) starring Richard Barthelmess and Molly O'Day from the Paul Killiam Silents Please TV series in 1961. The film was cut to less than half an hour and featured Mr Killiam’s narration explaining the narrative and other background. It worked remarkably well and from a time when silent film was largely regarded as a quaint relic, no doubt helped the flame to burn.

Molly and Richard

Richard B plays a cocky boxer who has courage only when wielding his fists; having been enlisted to fight in the Great War he has to find a way to be brave with guns and bombs… He’s saved by the love of comrades and of Molly O’Day with a bitter sweet ending marking it as definitely post-Big Parade.

Next up at the Bioscope is the Italian sky pirate film Filibus (1915) which pormises to be another treat!

Louise Dresser in Clarence Brown's The Goose Woman (1925)

At the recent showing  of The Eagle (reviewed below…), Kevin Brownlow showcased the magnificent opening ten minutes of Clarence Brown’s The Goose Woman and I’ve been keen to see the full film ever since.

This deceptively simple tale was instrumental in showing Brownlow what magic existed in American silent films and set his career on course to uncover as much as he could of the rest. In particular, it also sparked his interest in Clarence Brown, a director who still demands more attention.

The Goose Woman is certainly a film that demonstrates the range of Brown’s abilities with a satisfyingly consistent atmosphere perhaps reflecting his debt to Maurice Tournier. Shots flow together quickly and there are some deft moving shots, the camera tracking before Dresser and her goose as she stomps towards the murder scene and alongside the printing press as the rapid-response media of the day begins to circulate the story.

In another clever move she enters the front of her shack and the camera pans round to see her throwing an empty gin bottle into a bin overflowing with similar items: in a time of prohibition, Brown had to be careful how much apparent drinking he actually showed.

Pickford and the charming Constance...

There are some marvelous performances not least from Mary’s kid brother Jack Pickford and the utterly charming Constance Bennett who went on to become a major talking star in the thirties. There’s also excellent light relief from a strong under-card including Gustav von Seyfertitz and George Nichols as the heads of the police investigation.

But it’s Dresser’s film…if they’d invented the Oscars a couple of years early, it would have been nailed on. The dramatic shifts for her character are a gift to an actor of her ability and she grabs the opportunity with both hands, even with a bottle of gin stuck under one arm and a goose under the other.

Louise Dresser

Opera star to geese-keeper is one heck of a fall but that’s where we find Mary Holmes at the film’s start. Brown deftly establishes her heart-breaking back story as she shuffles drunkenly around her ramshackle shack, gazing in pain at pictures of her past as Marie de Nardi, rising opera star who lost everything after becoming pregnant.

The full details of the loss of her voice are not clear but the disgrace weighs heavily on her shoulders…at that time there was no coming back.

Home discomforts

The source of her shame, son Gerald (Pickford), arrives in his new motorcar, one light blinking off as he crosses a bridge. He tries to fix it but the engine gives him a shock… in exasperation he makes his way to his mother’s home…

Gerald is fresh-faced (strange to see the Pickford features and energy in another context) and seems a decent sort but he doesn’t appear to spend much time with mom. He can’t hide his disappointment at Mary’s dishevelled state and her attempt to disguise her drinking can’t mask the stench of gin.

She has one precious shellac recording of her former glories but this is accidentally knocked onto the floor by Gerald… it says it all, will he never stop hurting her? She resents every maternal bone in her body and the object of her instinctive affection…

Dresser and Pickford

There’s some vibrant scene setting as Gerald arrives at the theatre where his sweetheart, Hazel (Bennett) is rehearsing, off-stage sound-effects showing the comical artifice and all manner of scene shifting stage-work getting in the way of the young couple.

A bunch of flowers also arrives for Hazel but these are intercepted by Jacob Rigg (Spottiswoode Aitken) who throws them away in disgust… They are from the theatre owner, Amos Ethridge (Marc McDermott) and Jacob obviously doesn’t want to see his boss abuse his position… yet again.

Gerald thinks he’s got it made with his new car (plans to become a taxi driver?) and proposes to Hazel. As he slips on the ring her eyes are drawn to a cartoon showing the evolution of an engagement ring into a crying baby, an echo of Mary’s disappointment but a gamble the young actress is willing to make.

The deed ...

So far so domestic but events are about to take a serious turn. Ethridge is found shot dead and the fates begin to conspire as, in addition to being Hazel’s sexual harasser, Ethridge just happens to be Mary’s neighbour – his splendid mansion in sharp contrast to her crumbling shack… Legend has it that Brown found the shack on a scouting mission and had it transported, lock, stock and crumbling roof onto the backlot.

A paper boy breaks the news and Mary marches to investigate, accompanied by her most loyal goose. She finds the murder scene crawling with journalists who instantly buttonhole her as an untrustworthy drunken joke… as she reads about herself in the next day’s papers; Mary’s remaining self-esteem is crushed.

She fights off further incursions form the paparazzi hordes but is more receptive to the forces of the law as she is quizzed by Mr Vogel, the erudite States Attorney (von Seyfertitz) and his rather more down-to-earth colleague Detective Lopez (Nichols).

The polite force...

There’s a great comic undercurrent between the well-educated Vogel and career cop Lopez, but Brown balances this with the melodrama. Vogel discovers that Mary is in fact Marie de Nardi and decides she can be trusted and rescued at the same time. He was a fan in his younger years having seen her perform in Paris… But we’re a long way from France and none more so than Lopez who smells a rat… or is it a goose?

Mary senses her chance to regain her lost prestige and encouraged by the attorney’s interest sees a way of coming back to the public eye… I won’t go any further with the plot, needless to say that all is interlinked and redemption can only come through suffering… this is a Hollywood film after all!

Dresser’s theatrical experience makes her shine from the first moment she’s on screen, her character utterly believable and even likeable through all her deceit and weakness. She salutes her gin bottle in absolute recognition of her own culpability: she knows who’s really to blame for her situation.

Being all of us similarly responsible, we hope for the best as it’s the best we can hope for… as Pete Wylie once said. I can see why this was such an inspiration for Kevin Brownlow.

The Goose Woman also provided one other poignant signifier for Brownlow who used it as a way of meeting Mary Pickford. She was keen to see her brother once more in the film; poor Jack died aged 36 after living his life far too fast… but so began a major strand in the reclamation of her own fame.

The Goose Woman is – frustratingly – only available in a so-so DVD transfer – you can buy it here. There’s also versions of various length and quality on the inter-web if you’ve the patience but it’s crying out for a proper release of the re-mastered print shown at film festivals over the last few years.

 

Clarence directs Jack and Constance