Of time in this city… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Eight

 

Is an interest in silent film nostalgia for a time before we were born? Let’s ask Albert Camus shall we, who said that: A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. So, the fascination is more in understanding the working parts as much as the feeling and in the historical, creative circumstances for the filmmakers and film audience alike. 

 

Camus also said that the artist must contact the reality of his or her time, wresting from it something timeless and universal so what we are searching for is people who have done achieved this for their time and to look beyond the ludicrous concept of “dated” in assessing the content and the context.

 

Succeeding today was William de Mille who came up with some very pertinent questioning of his own in Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) in which Thomas Meighan’s Conrad has something of a mid-life crisis and tries to regress to childhood. So, not too far off Camus’ concepts but in a more homely way which is frankly more on my level and that of Thomas Meighan, pretty well-educated but in pharmacology not philosophy. Thomas plays the titular Conrad, who a few years after the First World War is living in comfort, supported by his faithful valet, Dobson (Charles Ogle) and wondering what it’s all for. Conrad is jaded and decides the best way to reconnect with his zest for life is to revisit his childhood by calling three old friends back to the cottage they used to spend summer in.

 

It's all too much for Conrad - he's watching a Pat and Patachon...

Ah, but you can’t just go back Conrad, as his pals quickly tell him but he’s not listening and decides to track down his first love, with future director and Mr Louise Brooks, A. Edward Sutherland playing him in flashback with Kathlyn Williams playing the older woman Mrs. Adaile, who gently rebuffed him. Conrad tracks her down to Italy and tries to rekindle their previous affection; can reliving young love work for either?

 

No spoilers, but Conrad is to discover that you can over-analyse and that sometimes you need to just stop thinking and simply engage with “Life” to find that chance of happiness. It’s a perfect little fable and Meighan is his usual self, intelligent, sensitive and always watchable.

 

Donald Sosin accompanied with the air of a man completely in touch with his creative consciousness (and moral compass).

 

Also connecting with the timeless and universal and in doing so creating it, was Daan van den Hurk whose emphatic new score for Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jnr (1924) made me enjoy this very familiar film anew. The music highlighted pretty much every section of the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone and it just grew in momentum and delicious tonality with the film. After an opening prologue including the earworm main theme, the music chased around with Buster in the quieter early stages only fully coming to life when his projectionist’s dreaming begins. From then on, it’s a symphony to silent style pretty much as Keaton intended but given extra emphasis and depth as the adventure of the Projectionist and all the films he has shown is laid before us.

 

Daan reveals Buster’s own symphonic approach as the film and the music crescendos with stirring strings and full-bodied brass – and tha’ knows, I love a bit o’ brass as Hindle Wakes’ Fanny Hawthorn might say. It was one of those uplifting orchestral moments Le Giornate does so well and congratulations must go to Daan, the full orchestra (70+ players?) as well as Ben Palmer who conducted so well. I was up in the Gods again but, by ‘eck the sound filled the space so well. A thrilling sonic adventure all round!

 

Most of us tired after a full week, the Verdi still erupted with the joy of recognition or holding this shared fascination close!! In the best showbusiness tradition, Le Giornate always leave ‘em/us wanting more!

Charlie and Monta Bell

 

Before Buster there was Charlie with a film I’ve not seen before, The Pilgrim (1923) which featured Chaplin’s 1958 score arranged by Timothy Brock and performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone as conducted by Ben Palmer.

 

It’s a film full of Chaplin’s movement and impish humour with heart as his escaped convict steals a pastor’s clothes as he bathes and then gets mistaken for the new vicar and has to follow through as the citizens are so friendly. This was Chaplin’s final film with long-term collaborator and paramour, Edna Purviance and once again her character provides the key to Chaplin’s redemption as a former cell-mate recognises him and wants in on “the action”. It’s an old argument but there’s enough comedic violence and pointed situations to make political points and some evangelicals were also upset by The Life of Charlie. Who knows what modern US politicians would have made of the closing sequence on the US/Mexican border… or what their fundamentalist Christian brethren would. Chaplin was another able to create something timeless and universal out of the realities of his time.

 

Marlene by the wall next to Harry Piel.

A Marlene Surprise!

 

I need to pay more attention as I had no idea that our Marlene was going to feature in Harry Piel’s Sein größter Bluff (The Big Bluff) (1927) nor that he was going to play himself and his brother as well as write, direct and produce. Nobody likes a show-off Harry apart from Marlene that is.

 

This was a lively adventure which featured car chases filmed in the South of France, double crosses and quadruple bluffs which make me extra thankful for being woken up by my esteemed colleague Ms Hutchinson of Worthing just as Giornate fatigue kicked in and I was able to re-join the film as it stepped up a gear in search of stolen diamonds with a hoard of gangsters chasing it as well as the twin Piels. Over the Festival we’ve seen Harry advance his work to such a level of polished populist filmmaking that this had so many elements of a sixties caper movie; he wasn’t Pabst or Murnau but as this 76^th film shows, he was a skilled crowd-pleaser, no matter whatever came after 1932…

 

Dietrich often played down her silent films not wishing to be deemed as too old school but by 1927 she was beginning to feature more and here she plays Yvette, “a ‘lady’ who puts her intellectual – and other – qualities exclusively into the service of worthwhile enterprises”, in this case acting to steal the jewels before her rivals can. She’s a perfect fit for a Lang-type super spy/secret agent and stands out in her scenes for poised screen energy. Having just watched A Touch of Evil I can see how she refined this persona of intelligence and bold sexuality. The perfect fit for Harry’s anti-hero and twin heroes with floppy fringes and fast cars: the name’s Piel, Harry Piel.

 

Accompaniment was from Masterclass student Timothy Rumsey who did a splendid job, I look forward to hearing more in future!

 

Madeleine Renaud and Maurice Touzé

I Married the Sea, Part Deux - Vent Debout [The Headwind] (1923)

 

After the French fishermen of Pêcheur d’Islande (screened on Tuesday) gave their life to the Atlantic Ocean, Jacques Averil (Léon Mathot) finds himself drawn to the sea to rebuild his life after his father ruins the family business and commits suicide. Viewed as a part-timer by the tough nuts on the fishing boat, he asserts his authority through violence emerging as top sea dog and winning grudging respect. This maritime Fight Club does move beyond the sea and there are many turbulent times on land as a potential fortune to be made from fossil fuels presents itself.

 

After being flung into an alcoholic depression after the accidental death of the ship’s cabin boy, Guillot (Maurice Touzé), Jacques meets Marie Richard (Madeleine Renaud) begins to find his legs on land again. So, my headline isn’t entirely appropriate, will he divorce the sea and marry a human? And, will he be able to avoid financial ruin from the land-based sharks aiming to drag him down?

 

Meg Morley accompanied with the smooth transitions we’ve come to expect and melodies for drama in all weathers and surfaces!

 

So, returning to the questions at the top; why exactly do I write this blog? Well it’s an attempt to capture the feeling of what has been screened and the experience of the location, audience and accompaniment for the screening. It’s a diary, one featuring well over 1000 screenings now and which evolves over time and circumstance. Like any diary it’s a discipline and I only keep on because I enjoy trying to that slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art…  I hope you do too and thank you so much to everyone who has read so far!

 

See you next year for #GCM43!

 

 

The Queen of Le Giornate Blogging is, of course, Pamela Hutchinson and if you haven’t already caught her daily reports on Silent London head over there right now!

The orchestra and crowds pack the Verdi for this year's finale.

Southbank shootout... The Racket (1928) with Stephen Horne, BFI

“A good story, plus good direction… a great cast… minus dumb supervision, is responsible for another great underworld film.” Variety, 1928

Two old friends from the toughest part of town, once choses the line of the law and the other takes his chances outside of it. Neither understands the other: time to get out of your racket says Louis, the gangster, “I happen to like my racket” says McQuigg a captain in the police force.

The Racket was amongst the first of many and for that reason and many others it feels ahead of its time; you can almost hear Thomas Meighan’s Irish drawl and Louis Wolheim’s guttural threats. It’s a template that grew and grew but essentially remained the same from the early 30’s to the films of Scorsese and HBO serials such as Boardwalk Empire. Modern-day Westerns? That point of emerging capitalism at which organisation is first brought by opportunism before regulations level the field…

It’s a world of nostalgic curiosity for an ultra-violent underground we never experienced and a visceral take on defined moral choices we are sure we’d be on the right side of. Produced by Howard Hughes, The Racket is well directed by Lewis Milestone who makes the most of the cramped interiors and limited mobility to create an uncomfortable intimacy that bristles throughout. From the opening moments when a window opens onto a night-time street scene to the final shocking shots, the film is noir in the literal sense.

Louis Wolheim and Thomas Meighan

I’ve seen The Racket before but this was the first time on screen and with expert live accompaniment provided by one of the hottest guns in town, Stephen Horne who, whilst he didn’t bring any violent cases… sorry, violin cases, brought his gangster game and delivered some controlled violence of his own on the NFT1's unsuspecting piano. As ever, accompaniment brings out the most meaning in silent films and today Mr Horne brought a jazz-age swagger to a jaunty piano score that matched the toughness of the majority of the central characters, including a marvellously spunky Marie Prevost.

It was a bar-room brawl of a score and made total sense in light of the film’s mix of gallows humour with a more serious side. We even had the debut (possibly…) of Stephen whistling, this time along with a couple of daredevil reporters trying to get a story at a gangster funeral: there is something comic about gangsters but they’re deadly serious.

Accordingly, The Racket shows some quite surprising shades of grey and Marie Prevost’s character is not alone in wondering what it is the separates the good guys from the bad. Based on Bartlett Cormack’s 1927 play – which featured one Edward G. Robinson – The Racket does feel like a theatrical conversion being very much dialogue-driven and mostly based in the same convincingly-drab set of a police station on the edge of town and almost outside the law…

Marie Prevost

It features Thomas Meighan as police Captain James McQuigg who gives a most convincing Irish-American turn full of swagger and sneer as he faces up to Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim) the Teflon crime boss from the same neighbourhood. The men are almost friends and perhaps once they were but now they’re involved in an escalating conflict that can only end one way.

Powerful as the men are they are pretty much upstaged by a dynamic performance from a blonde Marie Prevost whose nightclub singer Helen, is a girl with a heart of gold and an eye for the digging of same.  Tougher than the boys she drives the story on and balances her books in the devastating style – unscathed by compromise unlike the police, the press and the professional criminals…

Things kick off as Nick’s bootlegging distribution drifts into the territory of his rival Spike Corcoran (Henry Sedley) and there’s trouble… Nick attempts to warn off McQuigg but he turns up with his colleagues to spoil the show and arrest as many as possible. Nick invites McQuigg to a party at Weibergs for his little brother Joe… it’s not clear if he’s trying to work him or that there’s genuine respect. Either way things don’t turn out that well…

The delicate flower that is Louis Wolheim

First we see the newly curled blonde mop of Helen (Marie) as she works the nightclub room in her own way homing in on Nick’s rat-like brother before being pushed away by Nick who clearly has issues with women. But Helen’s made of stern stuff and comes back at him.

Then, events are interrupted by the arrival of Spike and his boys intent on some instant ledded-karma… they circle around with intent only to be outflanked by McQuigg’s men. It’s not enough though and in a short melee Spike buys the farm and no one saw who sold it. The gloves are off but as McQuigg targets Nick, the long arm of the outlaw reaches into the pockets of the senior officers and the earnest captain finds himself transferred out of harm’s way up in the furthest reaches of Precinct 28.

Out in these sticks, there's not much to do with Mr Scarsi’s business until his foolish brother drives up with Helen. After rebuffing his clumsy attempt at seduction, Helen leaves the car and Joe speeds off causing a pile up and the death of a young woman. He is taken into custody by the young Patrolman Johnson (G. Pat Collins) who saw it all.

No one's taking Helen for a ride... not even Nick Scarsi

The gentlemen of the press - Welch (Sam De Grasse) and Miller (Skeets Gallagher) are already gathered to get the gen on McQuigg’s relocation and sense there’s more to this story whilst a greenhorn, Ames (John Darrow) has a good heart but no sense. Helen arrives and immediately attracts Ames attention. She’s not letting on with regards to the identity of the hit and run driver and gets sent to the – rather packed – ladies quarters for the night. Sweetly Ames arrives with a nightdress and overnight bag.

Joe’s secret is soon out and the pressure from dodgy judiciary and Nick himself is soon applied. Nick tries to bribe Johnson only to have his money flung back. Having found an honest cop he simply shoots him in the back… is this film ever going to show that cheats don’t prosper?!

It’s a convoluted and very “wordy” denouement (see above on “stage origins”) yet which is well acted by the three main leads. Wolheim and Meighan are irresistible forces bouncing off each other and the corruption of their organisations. It takes Prevost’s Helen to puncture this masculine standoff and to show who it is who has the truest racket of all…

The dodgy DA tries to persuade Mac...

The Racket was only found in Hughes’ archive after his death and was restored by TCM in the noughties and presented with a forceful new score from Robert Israel which has plenty of good moments but does threaten to smother the action with intent: I enjoyed Stephen Horne’s music today far more… if ever a player could tip the end of their nose and wink at the audience then here he was, honky-tonk Horne, with nuanced gangster-wrapping for this sublte and surprising film.

The Racket was one of the first films to be nominate as Outstanding Picture in the 1929 Academy Awards – the winner being the mighty Wings - whilst Marie P surely deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination for she steals every scene she’s in!

Great to see it “live” in BFT1 and, despite the weather, so well attended too! Here's lookin' at you...

Heart. Of. Gold.

Shacked up... The Canadian (1926), Lillian Henley, Kennington Bioscope

Mona Palma and Thomas Meighan

One of the real treats of attending the Kennington Bioscope is not only watching films from Kevin Brownlow’s collection but also hearing his introductions. As the noughties game used to have it, we’re all six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but in Kennington we’re just three degrees through Kevin Brownlow to so many silent film stars, cast and crew.

Kevin not only met William Beaudine, The Canadian’s director, he also helped put on a screening of the film so that, having been too busy in the first instance, it’s director could finally see it 44 years after its run. Ill health almost prevented Beaudine attending and he wouldn’t give an introduction until the audience and he had a chance to see it the film was actually any good… after applause during and after the film, he got up on stage and announced his surprise that he wasn’t that bad director, in patches at least.

The Canadian is indeed a decent movie and has many similarities to Victor Sjöström’s later film The Wind (1928) a film found in very good quality in the UK prompting one US archivist to tell Kevin that they only had “the poor man’s Wind”… Whilst The Canadian is not as good as that nor City Girl (1928), another later film featuring a sea of wheat, it is a very good movie and accompanied by Lillian Henley’s perfectly-paced piano – lots of lovely, patient lines, so sure of tone - had more than one of this battle-hardened silent audience to wipe salty fluid from their eye: we’ve coped with Chaplin, Stella Dallas, Joan of Arc… but then this!?

Beaudine had been primarily a comedy director and, seeing out his contract to MGM as a lucrative loanee with Paramount, he took a chance and took the all expenses trip up to Canada to make a drama based on a 1913 play, The Land of Promise, by W. Somerset Maugham of all people. He was accompanied by cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff who ended up being assisted by a curious electrician, Stanley Cortez, who stayed up all night studying the cameras hoping to find a more better role. He ended up as Orson Wells cinematographer on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

See, from Kevin Brownlow to Orson Wells in three moves!

Nora Marsh (Mona Palma, who bears a passing resemblance to City Girl’s Mary Duncan…) has had to leave the “culture and poverty” of Britain (and this in 1926!!) following the death of her aunt. She travels way out west to stay with her brother Ed (Wyndham Standing) and his wife Gertie (Dale Fuller, who has a face you never forget and was so good in von Stroheim’s Greed).

Nora’s no explorer and quickly finds both the locale and the locals distasteful. She’s full of airs and graces and appalled by the rough and ready approach to dining; eating with a fork and no napkins. Chief amongst the louts is Frank Taylor (mighty Thomas Meighan) who is as incredulous as she at each other’s startling incompatibility.

But it’s not Frank Nora needs to worry about, at least not yet, Gertie’s a reasonable girl but when she finds her sister in law not only knows literally nothing about housework but continues to lord it over her and the men, she cracks and picks a fight Nora can only loose.

Thus it is, slightly improbably, that after being forced into the most humiliating of apologies, Nora offers her desperate hands in marriage to Frank who had previously said that he only wanted a woman to cook and clean. The two are wed in cold contractual misery and then face life together in a cold, tiny wooden shack that makes Lars Hanson’s gaff in The Wind look positively palatial.

There a thousand tiny terrors start to unfold including the issue of marital intimacy… like a gent Frank sleeps in the main room leaving Mona the bedroom. But, the pressure builds, and things are about to get a lot more intense.

The Canadian deserves its own reputation and both leads excel. I knew what to expect from Mr Thomas Meighan, but Mona Palma was also very good – pride just about trumping fear until she learns to adapt.

There’s also a nice turn from Charles Winninger as Pop Tyson who dances a mean jig!

Up first was an eclectic and satisfying mix of shorts the best of which was It’s A Gift (1923) which featured Snub Pollard in a small metal car propelled by his use of a giant magnet to follow other vehicles; it’s an iconic image and now I know which film it was from! Snub plays a scientist who has an automated breakfast and wake up routine similar to Wallace in The Wrong Trousers: we’d all like to pull a few strings to get our breakfast made and trousers hitched.

The gifted Mr Pollard

There was also an oddity called Life’s Staircase (1915) featuring a couple reading and ripping up old love letters, she ranged left and he, right, as the circumstances of each letter and token place alongside, double-exposed. It’s about marriage and the prototype relationships we leave behind, and it reminded me of Scott Pilgrim vs The World in which our hero must battle all his girl’s previous partners. In this film he’d only have to get married and they’d all fade away.

First film was a dreamy confection from Louis Feuillade all about Spring (1909) which featured lots of women dancing in flowing white dresses. It was impressive, but I was concerned about the safety of the numerous doves held aloft during the calisthenics.

My garden, today

If you like ladies in swimming costumes, an episode of the long running women’s cinemagazine, Eve’s Film Review, was about to explore how “Eve’s” swimming costume has shrunk since the 1880’s. There was definitely a trend on the evidence presented and cause for concern for some but boy, were they in for a shock twenty year’s later.

Felix the Cat started life in Eve’s Film Review and he popped up trying to win a battle with a clown for the hand of a doll in Toy Land. Itchy won (or was it Scratchy?) and the romance between paper cat and human doll went to plan but oh, Mr Hays were you not watching?!

Meg Morley matched these broad themes with an assured eclecticism of her own: if you can accompany cartoon cats, Doves in danger, Snubb’s auto race and swimming-costumed women washing elephants in Manchester zoo, then you can probably cope with anything.

Another superb evening at the one and only Kennington Bioscope c/o The Cinema Museum! Thanks to Lillian and Meg for playing, Michelle Facey (the shorts: meticulous research as usual!) and Kevin Brownlow (his film!) for introducing, Dave Locke for projecting and to everyone who keeps this special place going.

PS For Ladies Only? Eve's Film Review: Pathe Cinemagazine 1921-33 by Jenny Hammerton looks fascinating and is available on Amazon!

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.

Assault on Precinct 28… The Racket (1928)

This film shows some quite surprising shades of grey and Marie Prevost’s character is not alone in wondering what it is the separates the good guys from the bad. Based on Bartlett Cormack’s 1927 play – which featured a star turn from one Edward G. Robinson – The Racket does feel like a theatrical conversion being very much dialogue-driven and mostly based in the same convincingly-drab set of a police station on the edge of town and almost outside the law…

It features a super turn from Thomas Meighan as police Captain James McQuigg who gives a most convincing Irish-American turn full of swagger and sneer as he faces up to Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim) the Teflon crime boss from the same neighbourhood. The men are almost friends and perhaps once they were but now they’re involved in an escalating conflict that can only end one way.

Marie Prevost

Powerful as the men are they are pretty much upstaged by a dynamic performance from a blonde Marie Prevost whose nightclub singer Helen, is a girl with a heart of gold and an eye for the digging of same.  Tougher than the boys she drives the story on and balances her books in the devastating style – unscathed by compromise unlike the police, the press and the professional criminals…

The story is another you might expect from the early talkies and the gangster boom that followed and shows almost every character to be on the make – involved in some kind of racket. Nick tells his “pal” to give up his racket and, presumably take up his own but McQuigg responds by saying he likes his racket: the business of honest policing.

Spike and the boys

Things kick off as Nick’s bootlegging distribution drifts into the territory of his rival Spike Corcoran (Henry Sedley) and there’s trouble… Nick attempts to warn off McQuigg but he turns up with his colleagues to spoil the show and arrest as many as possible.

Nick invites McQuigg to a party at Weibergs for his little brother Joe… it’s not clear if he’s trying to work him or that there’s genuine respect. Either way things don’t turn out that well…

Louis Wolheim

First we see the newly curled blonde mop of Marie as she works the nightclub room in her own way homing in on Nick’s rat-like brother before being pushed away by Nick who clearly has issues with women. But Helen’s made of stern stuff and comes back at him.

Events are interrupted by the arrival of Spike and his boys intent on instant karma… they circle around with intent only to be outflanked by McQuigg’s men. It’s not enough though and in a short melee Spike buys the farm and no one saw who sold it. The gloves are off but as McQuigg targets Nick, the long arm of the outlaw reaches into the pockets of the senior officers and the earnest captain finds himself transferred out of harm’s way up in the furthest reaches of Precinct 28.

Helen's not getting taken for a ride

Not much to do with Mr Scarsi’s business up in those parts until his foolish brother arrives with Helen. After rebuffing his clumsy attempt at seduction, Helen leaves the car and Joe speeds off causing a pile up and the death of a young woman. He is taken into custody by the young Patrolman Johnson (G. Pat Collins) who saw it all.

The gentlemen of the press - Welch (Sam De Grasse) and Miller (Skeets Gallagher) are already gathered to get the gen on McQuigg’s relocation and sense there’s more to this story whilst a greenhorn, Ames (John Darrow) has a good heart but no sense.

John Darrow and Marie Prevost

Helen arrives and immediately attracts Ames attention. She’s not letting on with regards to the identity of the hit and run driver and gets sent to the – rather packed – ladies quarters for the night. Sweetly Ames arrives with a nightdress and overnight bag.

Joe’s secret is soon out and the pressure from dodgy judiciary and Nick himself is soon applied. Nick tries to bribe Johnson only to have his money flung back. Having found an honest cop he simply shoots him in the back… is this film ever going to show that cheats don’t prosper?!

McQuigg stands firm

It’s a convoluted and very “wordy” denouement (see above on “stage origins”…) yet which is well acted by the three main leads. Wolheim and Meighan are irresistible forces bouncing off each other and the corruption of their organisations.

It takes Prevost’s Helen to puncture this masculine standoff and to show who it is who has the truest racket of all…

Produced by Howard Hughes, The Racket is well directed by Lewis Milestone who makes the most of the cramped interiors and limited mobility to create an uncomfortable intimacy that bristles throughout. From the opening moments when a window opens onto a night-time street scene to the final shocking shots, the film is noir in the literal sense.

The Racket was only found in Hughes’ archive after his death and was restored by TCM in the noughties and presented with a determined new score from Robert Israel which has plenty of good moments but does occasionally threaten to smother the action with intent.

Mean streets

The film is available to stream on TCM. It was one of the first films to be nominate as Outstanding Picture in the 1929 Academy Awards – the winner being the truly mighty Wings - whilst Marie P surely deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination for she steals every scene she’s  in!

A game of two Talmadges… The Heart of Wetona (1919) vs Secrets (1924)

Of all the major stars of the silent ere – and I mean major - Norma Talmadge seems to be one of the hardest for modern viewers to connect with. Jeanine Basinger* is particularly good value of this point suggesting that whilst sister Constance had a definite persona that rises above her films, Norma was a more protean presence dependent on the strength of her material and that material was very much attuned to the tastes of the time.

For me, there’s no doubt Norma was the better dramatic actress, had greater performing ambition and more range – no matter how much I love “Dutch” as well. Her controlled expression was certainly put to good effect in Going Straight, Smiling Through and The Devil’s Needle and even lighter fare such as The Social Secretary. She could hold the camera’s gaze as well as Mary and Lillian and she was more womanly-grown-up than either and maybe that’s part of the problem.

Norma was often cast, even by herself,  as a lower middle class woman in situations of moral compromise and the audiences lapped these films up even if now their story lines are too over-used to generate much dramatic impact , no matter her skills as an actress. Perhaps she and husband/producer Joseph Schenck targeted the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation too firmly at their winning formula: the popular middle ground?

And how tastes change.

These two films represent extremes of Norma’s career: one an almost risible western and the other a far classier affair well directed by Frank Borzage and allowing the actress to really show her ability. They show what she could do and what she clearly chose to do and the day job served her very well…

Wetona worries...

The Heart of Wetona (1919) features Norma as the daughter of a white mother and an Indian chief Quannah (Fred Huntley), she has been educated in the East but still speaks in broken English… This is a film about the nobility of the savage as well as their hot-headed-ness and adherence to strange old religions. Of its time… naturally.

It’s also a remarkably frank film in terms of young Wetona’s sex life. She creates a scene at the tribe’s tribute to their gods by revealing her inappropriate casting as their “vestal virgin”: she has been having relations with a white man and father, severely unimpressed, plans to exact messy retribution.

Gladden James looking shifty

The guilty man is irresponsible Anthony Wells (Gladden James – who always looks a wrong ‘un) a young man who avoids responsibility at every turn in spite of the patronage of Government agent, Hardin (the asdmirable Mr Thomas Meighan).

Hardin offers to take responsibility until such time as Hardin is “ready”… it sounds a bit vague but we get the drift. Wetona goes along, her faith in Tony remarkably unshaken… even though we’ve worked him out long ago.

Wetona about to fail the vestal medical...

No spoilers… you can probably work it out for yourself. Needless to say, James is suitably craven, Huntley is a very noble savage and Meighan is excellent as the stand-up, stand-by guy.

Norma has a lot of screen time and a fair amount of close-ups to allow her to show her skill but the story rings slightly false in spite of some genuine conflict and peril, most of it constructed on narrative sand…  That face simply isn’t given enough emotional to work with and the close-ups only serve to remind the viewer how much real drama is missing.

Thomas Meighan and Norma

The Variety reviewer was unimpressed…  “…it is hardly a star part for Miss Talmadge. To be sure she is the pivotal character about which the plot revolves, but the role is purely a receptive one, and she is called upon to do little but pose as the bearer of the heavy burdens.”

Then again, Edward Weitzel was more positive in Moving Picture World, January 4, 1919 “…none of her impersonations has revealed deeper feeling or a better understanding of the art of acting. There is never the slightest doubt in the mind of the spectator as to what Norma Talmadge is trying to convey. …she is picturesque and beautifully human…”

See… even then “… the bearer of heavy burdens…” but "...beautifully human..." all the same.

Secrets (1924) is an altogether more satisfying film not just because of a superior story but obviously through Borzage’s inventive direction which provides a much richer dramatic scope. Based on a stage play – itself adapted from an opera – the film starts in the present and works forward from the past in a clever script from Frances Marion.

It’s 1924 and Norma is seventy-something Mary Carlton anxiously waiting for an improvement in the failing health of her husband John (Eugene O’Brien). She barely looks like Norma (30 at the time) and, even through the poor quality haze of the Silents are Golden DVD, she is clearly relishing the range of this role. She begins to look through her old diary and drifts off remembering her earlier life…

Norma goes from 1924 back to 1865...

We’re whisked back to 1865 when a 16-years old Mary is being prepared for a ball by her mother (Emily Fitzroy) and aunt. This is the lightest-hearted part of the film and there’s much fun to be had with the application of various large constructs that form parts of the tent-like evening wear… The joviality stops when Mary’s father, William (George Nichols) reveals that he has discovered her nascent affair with one of his clerks (O’Brien).

George O'Brien and Norma Talmadge

Mary is locked in her room but decides to elope – on a penny farthing no less – with young John and to head off for America…

Five years later and the couple have established a home stead and have a small baby. A doctor calls to tend to the sick infant and reveals that a gang led by local ruffian Jack are intent on gaining revenge on him for his part in capturing one of their own.

The gang duly arrive and John defends house supported by Mary who refuses to let him sacrifice himself. The tense battle is lent further poignancy when Mary discovers her baby has perished and confirms the death by using a mirror to try and detect any signs of breathing… the saddest of silent mimes. Realising her husband must fight on, Mary cuddles the dead baby pretending that he is asleep…and  you’d have to be made of granite not to be moved. Talmadge handles these moments with incredible grace.

Holding a mirror up to life

Moving forward to Mary’s 39th birthday in 1888 we hit one of the missing sections of this copy4 – by now Mary has three more children Blanche (Alice Day), Audrey (Mae Giraci) and John Jnr (Donald Keith – Merton of the Movies himself!). She has also been reconciled with her family.

But another crisis takes place as her husband’s affair with one Mrs. Estelle Manwaring (Gertrude Astor) is revealed by her parents. Matters come to a head when Estelle arrives and brazenly asks for Mary to let John go, claiming that she has ruined his life and cannot make him happy… it’s a point of view but we wonder what the steadfast Mrs Carlton could possibly have done…

Gertrude Astor, Donald Keith and Norma Talmadge

Mary being Mary she offers to let John go if he truly loves Estelle who senses victory only to have her hopes dashed as John returns and decides no contest… Norma’s performance of quiet resolution and dignity is persuasive and genuinely moving…

The scene shifts forward to the present day: will there be one last act for Mr and Mrs Carlton?

“It is a work of art, deftly handled with a divine touch that makes it stand out as one of the greatest screen characterizations in years…” raved Variety, before continuing...“The direction of Frank Borzage must be credited with a great part in the success that the picture is certain to have. He has taken Miss Talmadge and handled her in a manner that makes her reveal artistry such as she never displayed heretofore…”

Silent scream

Photoplay agreed saying that “The photography, particularly in the first part of the picture, is touched with real loveliness. And the scenario, by Frances Marion, is always searchingly human. But it is the personality, and the ability of Norma Talmadge that makes this a thing worth seeing.”

This final point takes us back to Jeanine Basinger’s comment: but here it was not just Norma’s talent that was engaged – there was a very personal investment in the performance that gave it such integrity. An actor must draw on personal experience to convince but there’s always control. Maybe with the right combination of director, script and circumstance, Norma Talmadge really put on a show?

We should see more… unfortunately only Wetona is currently available on DVD and it is to be hoped that Secrets and Norma's other film with Frank Borzage, The Lady (1925) will someday get the release and restoration they deserve.

*In her book Silent Stars - essential reading!
** Press comments lifted from Greta de Groat's superlative Talmadge site. Go straight there now!