Don't be judgy… The Hangman (1928) with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

 

This was a Weimar surprise unearthed on 35mm from the BFI’s archives by the diligence of Tony Fletcher and given its first outing in many years in front of an audience who hadn’t seen it including fearless accompanist Colin Sell! We only had Tony’s word for it but as MC Michelle Facey pointed out in her introduction, there were plenty of quality elements in this tale of crime and punishment and a story that whilst it could be predicted was still so perfectly timed that it allowed a warm glow for the audience much in need of it given prevailing weather conditions in the capital.

 

The Hangman aka Der Henker or Der Staatsanwalt klagt an in German was directed by Theodor Sparkuhl and Adolf Trotz, being the former’s only directed film although he had an incredible career as a cameraman for everyone from Lubitsch in the teens through to Hollywood and some ground-breaking film noir. He has some good ideas here and perhaps the presence of Trotz indicated that he wasn’t entirely comfortable in the role but the results are certainly very interesting.

 

It is a tale of two women or rather four with two men of honesty and rigid morality caught up in a web of bad luck and passion all of whose fate is in the hands of chance as much a judgement. It is also a tale of two very different bars, one a dive joint offering “Varieté” on tatty posters in its grimy windows plus drinks and a good time down below, the other a kind of Weimar dream bar called Spiders with webbed interior design to match and a circular serving area at the centre to which men are inevitably drawn.

Andrée Lafayette

At the heart of this particular parlour, we find the warm smile of French actress Andrée Lafayette who plays the perfect host: a beauty who welcomes her male customers and yet maintains her distance only sipping the champagne they gulp near the centre of the web. She is asked if she is happy doing this work and smiles “not really” but she’s the consummate professional doing what she needs to get by.

 

Also doing the same but in a more precarious environment is Kiki (Irm Cherry) who works as a hostess in the less salubrious venue where she must fend off the attentions of drunken middle-aged men such as the captain played by Georg John who is harmless enough especially when compared with the villain played by Fritz Kampers. She has set her sights higher though and is in love with the tall and prosperous-looking brother of Andrée’s character played by Spanish actor and former FC Barcelona player* (oh yes!) Félix de Pomés. Sorry, there are so few character names, this film is barely out there online and I’m trusting on memory: such is the thrill of the Bioscope and films that only exist on celluloid. Welcome to the future-past of physical media.

 

Now… all of these connections will be vitally important when I outline the plot and this will then revolve around the imposing presence of public prosecutor Leander played by the sharp-featured Bernhard Goetzke a man who looks like he’s walked straight off the Mount Rushmore of chiselled Weimar actors leaving Emil, Conrad and Fritz stuck to the cliff face. Leander is a stickler for the word of the law if not the spirit of justice and as the film begins we see him sending yet another guilty party to their end with the Weimar Republic having retained the death sentence after much debate; the guillotine was the favoured method.

 

The many faces of Félix de Pomés, from the Nou Camp to Hollywood!

He's not a man who can’t let his hair down though and meets Andrée’s character when dragged down to the bar by a colleague. Pretty soon he’s regularly called to the bar to find out more about this fascinating woman who retains such dignity in the face of the inebriated and weak of character.

 

Elsewhere her brother is less restrained as he finds Kitty in the arms of a customer and following the drunken man outside, there’s a scuffle and the older rival falls unconscious to the ground. Sadly, for him, he awakes to find himself being robbed by the aforementioned villain who hits him harder causing him a fatal blow on the back of the head. After the thief makes his escape the body is found and, being the decent man he is, Félix’s character believes he is responsible and confesses.

 

The circumstantial evidence is strong and this confession surely marks this as an open and shut case but, driven not only by her concern for her sibling but also her growing affection for Leander, Andrée’s character determines to try and persuade the prosecutor of the need for understanding in what seems to be a crime of passion as well as an accidental death. As things progress there is some nice interplay between the two leads and even some lighter moments courtesy of Leander’s housekeeper (Anna von Palen) who sees her role being usurped by her employer's new romantic interest. There’s also excellent support from the siblings’ mother, played by Antonie Jaeckel, who has previously been estranged for a long time from her daughter.

 

Irm Cherry wearing a hat in 1928.

The narrative flows with Sparkuhl and Trotz mixing the growing injustice, the family and romantic ties in with solid control and building up the tension as the legal rock meets the moral hard place… It’s heart-felt and heart-breaking when you look forward to the tens of thousands who were to be sentenced to death under the next regime in Germany.

 

The film features lots of pleasing late silent camera movements with clever reverse shots of the characters in the bar and tracking shots as Leander walks with his love. There is also some expressionist overlays as Leander walks dazed through the city streets contemplating what he has become in a literal tumult of conflicted emotions, the pavements and houses revolving around his intense confliction.

 

Colin Sell accompanied sight unseen and provided marvellous flourishes to adorn the twisty tale as the honesty and dogged morality of both men threatens to doom one and kill the other. We shuffled nervously in our seats as the climax approached and well… let’s hope someone else screens this film before too long! It was a hit Tony, a palpable hit!

 

Tony Fletcher also presented the first part of the evening with a look at films made at Fort Lee near New Jersey in the period before Hollywood with excerpts from the fabulous double Milestone/Kino Blu-ray Made in New Jersey: Films from Fort Lee which he had procured in Pordenone.

 

New Jersey, not Hollywood, was the real birthplace of the modern film industry. Fort Lee — just across the Hudson from the Bronx — became a key site for early film production. During the 1910s, motion pictures were a major part of suburban New Jersey community which looks much more like the old country than the dusty modernist landscapes of California. It’s a bit more built up these days and we saw a poignant documentary film showing the decaying lot in excerpts from Theodore Buff's Ghost Town (1935).

 

"Forget your land I have a nice hat..."

The Curtain Pole (1909), a short comedy directed by D.W. Griffith with an uncredited Mack Sennett as a man who search for the titular pole leads to chaos also including Florence Lawrence. The Indian Land Grab (1910), a young Indian chief goes to Washington to stop a land grab and is almost knocked off course by the daughter of the land grabber in question who is instructed to use her womanly wiles to distract him. A shock of the old certainly but the audiences were apparently more upset about the genuine romance that develops between the two than the film’s call for fairness to native Americans. Go figure

 

Talking of shocks, we also had an extract from the legendary The Vampire (1913) which featured an outrageously sexualised dance with Bert French and Alice Eis which captures the essence of Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 poem describing the dangers of women of a certain sort. The dance is watched by Harold Brentwell (Harry F. Millarde) making him consider his relationship with Sybil the Vampire (Alice Hollister) and I can’t wait to find out what happens… The poem and the story were used as the basis of Theda Bara’s A Fool There Was (1915). Women were to blame for so many things back in the day.

Bert French and Alice Eis were once arrested for performing this dance on stage...

 

John Sweeney accompanied and I had to check that his keyboard was not aflame for the above dance sequence, he plays so well anticipating the rhythms and the emotional movements in ways that really help us to connect with these archaic sensibilities, the media meets an audience who are moved to the 1910s as much as the history comes to us now. Here, actions and piano speak more eloquently than words ever could.

 

Yet another special event at the Cinema Museum and thanks to the cast and crew who enabled us to see this long-hidden film. No archive is too deep or too dusty to prevent the determined search of the Bioscope’s researchers!

 

You can order the set from Amazon.com at reasonable rates as well as from Kino in the USA. It’s worth it for The Vampire dance alone but Fort Lee remains a major part of cinematic history!

 

Andrée Lafayette also appeared in the 1923 Hollywood adaptation of Trilby the second of many Svengali features... EYE have a copy!

* Señor de Pomés played for FC Barcelona and RCD Espanyol (Barca’s reserves) in the 1910s, during the sport's amateur era and he also played for Catalonia, the national team who strangely, unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t get to compete at World Cups. He was also a skilled swordsman who featured for Spain in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics. The Hangman was one of his first feature films and he made over 70 more into the late sixties, including King of Kings (1961) and Lost Command (1966).

28 appearances and one goal for Barça!

 

Ralph Ince evening… The Argyle Case (USA 1917) with Ashley Valentine, Kennington Bioscope

Thank you Tony Fletcher!

As Michelle Facey observed in her introduction, according to Wikipedia The Argyle Case is a lost film, and, indeed whilst there are no holdings in the Library of Congress, the AFI site also says that The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021. Yet here it was on the BFI’s 35mm print projecting almost perfectly onto the Bioscope’s screen with a few missing frames here and there and a little deterioration on the blue/night scenes especially but, overall, a very impressive survivor. The KB’s super sleuth Tony Fletcher had located the print during the longs hours of eyeballing the catalogue and playing lucky dip, viewing the elements on Steenbeck machines in the BFI’s archive.

 

We are so lucky to have the KB and its team of researchers, collectors, projectionists and accompanists for where else do you get to see films like this that probably haven’t been projected in decades and which, so far as their country of origin is concerned, no longer survives. Preserving film is a global effort and I’m privileged to have seen this film and to try and retell the experience with possibly it’s first review in decades… even the audience plays its role!

 

The Argyle Case was directed by Ralph Ince, younger brother of Thomas, and filmed in 1916 for release the following year. It stars Robert Warwick as private detective Asche Kayton a man who uses all of the latest forensic techniques to assist his Holmesian deductions and an actor who has something of the bearing and look of Ivan Mosjoukine. He gets called into the murder of the wealthy John Argyle (Frank McGlynn), a man who lives in a Gotham palace somewhere up in the 900s on 5^th Avenue.

 

Clearly Ralph Ince had been watching the French serials of Louis Feuillade but his detective is far more grounded in authentic police procedural technique and the narrative maintains a good balance between the need to show each major step without either giving the game away or dragging its feet. The film is propelled along by a mixture of uncertainty – does even this great detective suspect the Police’s obvious perp – as well as the mechanics of fingerprinting, “detectaphones” placed in the suspects rooms, and the quick response and actions provided by telegram and telephone; this is the modern criminal investigation unit who do rather show up the local police force.

 

Winding back, the story opens with old man Argyle (Frank McGlynn) fretting over the decision of his son Bruce (Arthur Albertson) to marry Nan Thornton (Gazelle Marche) when he had planned on his marrying his ward, Mary (Elaine Hammerstein) who he had adopted after promising her father on his deathbed. Bruce and Mary are like siblings though and neither feels that Nan is anything other than a love match. In a fury, Argyle throws out the newlyweds and calls his solicitor Mr. Hurley (Frank Evans) re-writes his will so that only Mary will be the beneficiary, despite her protests that Bruce is his own flesh and blood.

 

The following night is disturbed, and in the morning, house full of dread, Argyle is discovered murdered in the living room, with a poker the likely implement but no sign of Professor Plum. The police duly arrive and start making assumptions with Mary the one with the clearest motive given the change in the will. The police, under the leadership of Inspector Dougherty (John Fleming) start to follow Mary, clear that they’ve got their woman, but her brother Bruce has other ideas, calling in the master investigator Kayton to make sure of a thorough investigation.

 

Kayton quickly starts to join the dots, uncovering a woman’s fingerprints on the bureau next to the murdered man’s chair and eliminating the women in the house through taking their prints. He’s through and his logic stands up in terms of supporting the unfolding narrative. Soon other potential parties are uncovered such as Mary’s mother Nellie Marsh (Mary Alden) who is working with a counterfeiter called Frederick Kreisler (H. Cooper Cliffe) one of whose $100 Dollar forgeries is found at the scene of the murder.

 

Elaine Hammerstein

I won’t give anything further away just to say that this script, adapted by Chapin and Ince from Harriet Ford and Harvey J. O'Higgins’ novel of the same name, has plenty of twists and turns. It’s a fine, entertaining film with many interesting shots from cinematographer André Barlatier, evidence of the growing technical sophistication of the age; an overhead of Bruce as he sees his murdered father dead on the floor, numerous characters silhouetted as they enter buildings backed by bright external light, a shoot out in almost total darkness with flashes of light and gunfire the only illumination… The title cards are also interesting with a drawing of a torch illuminating the introduction of each new character and the actor’s name: playful Pulp!

 

Robert Warwick provides a perfect private detective with intelligence and intensity, he was to go on to a long career in film and television but here is a suave presence who, of course, attracts the interest of his client Mary. Elaine Hammerstein is eye-catching with an open face that seems anachronistic, transported from a more recent time, showing good expression and presence. She was one of The Hammersteins, a theatrical dynasty and her cousin Oscar, was indeed the lyricist of The Sound of Music and many more, A talented family and she was as much on stage as in film.

 

Forensic accompaniment was provided by Ashley Valentine complementing and completing the entertainment as he connected with this rare piece with assured tone and dynamic lines: when was the last time this 117-year-old entertainment was heard in the same way?

 

Michelle summed it all up by pointing out that, once again, we were watching films that you would not see anywhere else and this was not just the “lost” main feature but two earlier shorts from Ince that were from private collections.

 

A Regiment of Two (1913) with Timothy Rumsey

 

We kicked off with a lively comedy co-directed by Ralph Ince, who also features in the film as the bumptious Lord Dudley the preferred choice of suitor for the daughter of Mrs Wilton (Rose Tapley), Laura (Edith Storey, star of Vitograph’s gender-swapping A Florida Enchantment (1915)). Of course, Laura loves another, the handsome Jack Brent (E.K. Lincoln) who is also a member of the 13^th Regiment, Army reserves.

 

This gives Laura’s father Ira (Sidney Drew) and his son-in-law Harry Bennett (Harry T. Morey), an idea as they pretend to enlist with the 13^th so they can attend the Tiger Club on Fridays to cavort with a French dancer, smoke cigars and drink. It’s a wizard wheeze until a war erupts in Panama and the “boys” have to pretend to go along with the regiment to battle leaving their wives and daughters distraught. Ira and Harry are in no danger though as they head off for a fishing trip – what’s an innocent deception between couples? Trouble’s a comin’ though as newspaper reports of the 13^th suffering a wipe-out cause them to work out their excuses…

 

It's fast-paced, inventive and pure daft and also features Anita Stewart – just 18 at the time - as Mrs. Harry Bennett. We watched a very impressive digital transfer from a 35mm copy in a private collection, once again, only at the Bioscope!

 

His Phantom Sweetheart (1915) with Timothy Rumsey

Anita Stewart also features in this short as the titular sweetheart who attracts the attention of Earle Williams - voted America’s number one star in 1915 – with the two often playing romantic partners. Williams’ character spies her at a performance at the Garrick Theatre – some fab on-stage action here too – and we follow their growing intimacy before things start to turn very dark indeed…

We saw a 4k transfer of a restored 16mm print from a private collection that had fresh title cards and some lush tints; again I feel the urge of the collector and the satisfaction that must be felt with every chance to share. 

This was Timothy Rumsey’s Bioscope debut and he accompanied both these films with assurance and some style; he’s already imbued with the spirit of these precious films and the phantom forces that guide the players’ hands on the KB’s grand piano!

 

Another special evening in Kennington and once again, as Michelle thanked the team, we can only re-iterate our gratitude for this museum, this unique club and those passionate cineastes who make the magic happen!

 

 

 

Night for day… British Silent Film Festival Symposium 2018, Day One, Phoenix Cinema

The sun’s out, cracking the flags in London on the hottest day of the year and we just don’t care, we’re sat in the dark in a 108-year old purpose-built cinema watching ultra-rare British silent films, well, mostly silent…

Phonofilm programme 'Mainly Men - A Night in the Music Hall 1925-1928' a selection of early sound shorts of cabaret acts presented by Tony Fletcher

Tony Fletcher’s sessions on early sound films are a bit of a tradition at the BSFFS and they are always fascinating, rewarding his ling hours of subterranean research. They show the ghosts of musical hall past and give a real insight into the performance style and cultural mores of variety as well as the period of silent film. They also prove, without doubt, that we are a country of weirdos with a sense of humour to match.

We started off with gondoliers in Clapham with Billy Merson singing his popular ditty, “You and I and my Gondola” a parody of more earnest poetry from the likes of Robert Service. Then Charles Patton pleaded “If Your Face Wants to Laugh, Well Let It” and in a way we almost did. The Plattier Brothers turned a gag involving bird-song into a sketch which was gruesome in so many ways as one brother flirted with the other using only the sounds of nightingales; they were French you see, and such esoteric whimsy was no doubt a novelty.

Billy Merson played the Manchester Palace Theatre in 1921, once nightly and every afternoon.

Dandy George was more typical fare teasing a highly-drilled terrier into performing tricks and at one point holding him by the feet as he “stood” to attention. We simply don’t know how many terriers he worked with over the years after his first “partner” Rosie passed after a short retirement. A Doggy Ditty followed from George Jackley which was more properly A “Dodgy” Ditty by today’s standards but who doesn’t still make jokes about their mother-in-law? Ahem.

Teddy Elben’s version of He Walked Right In featured the fab Phonofilm Cabaret Girls strutting their stuff including the “new Black Bottom Dance” – there were four girls but only three danced due to constraints of space and the need to keep Teddy in shot.

Now, Hal Jones, who I am sure you all know as the famous Lancashire Comedian, sang a song about Swistles which seemed to be a condensed milk not unlike that produced by Nestle. It was a shaggy dog of a song which featured a laboured refrain that proper got my goat… still, it were funny and I did used to so love condensed milk sandwiches myself: colly-olly sarnies as my Mum called them.

Kids, don't try this at home

Jack Hodges – The Raspberry King and a big influence on Spike Milligan (remember the Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town…), was an inventive musical comic who in addition to fruity flavours also mastered the musical saw.

The highlight for me was the Coney Island Six – American jazz musicians who not only could play but dance as well. In Syncopation and Song (1927), they took turns in singing, dancing and swapping instruments whipping up a storm of high-energy trad that almost had us up and dancing in the aisles. And that’s jazz!

Ships That Pass in the Night (1921), Cyrus Gabrysch

“Despite its lack of plot and pessimistic tone… Whatever its value as entertainment, it is undoubtedly an artistic success.” The Bioscope, 29^th September 1921

Bit of a tone poem this one and controversially so… the audience split in fierce debate over whether this mountain drama was too mannered, too lacking in event and, indeed, whether it was good at all and, even, better than Black Narcissus!?

Ships don’t just pass in the night and this was an absorbing and unflinching tale about honesty and difficult loyalties. Adapted from Beatrice Harraden’s novel of the same name, published in 1893, the story is a deliberation more than a drama and, set amongst your actual Swiss alps at Davos Platz, is lovely to look at… as amongst all this casual beauty, life slips away.

Francis Roberts plays Robert Allisten a “disagreeable man” who is an architect on the way up, he’s devoted to his work and his mother equally and she (Irene Rooke) to him; clearly the love of her life. Just as his designs for a new city hall are accepted he is delivered a “death sentence” – a diagnosis of TB which, in this pre-antibiotic age, could only be treated by a shift to altitude. So it is that he must tear up his blueprint and abandon his ambition.

Beatrice Harraden

In a Swiss kurhaus he prepares to convalesce in misery barely touched by the lives of those around him and feeling an obligation to keep living if only for his mother’s sake. He encounters his emotional counter in the form of bookseller’s daughter Bernadine Holme (Filippi Dowson) who is a warm a he is cold.

Also, there are the Reffolds, he (Arthur Vezin) dying and she, Einifred (Daisy Markham) still vibrant and looking for life. Contrasts are clear between this relationship and Robert’s with his mother: he is obliging himself into misery whilst Einifred is refusing to end her life just because her love is losing his. Einifred finds an enabling conscience in Bernadine who is happy to spend time with her husband; she also looks straight into the heart of uncomfortably dark truths but sees only light. So, it is that she is amused rather than repelled by the difficult architect and gradually his Vulcan heart begins to melt.

It moves quicker than a glacier and is thoroughly absorbing as it wrong foots all expectations of polite romantic progression as death takes people as casually as breathing. Percy Nash who directed a decent 1920 version of Hobson’s Choice (available on BFI Player) clearly relished the mix of interior and exterior spectacular and fills his deceptive, possibly transgressive teapot with a simmering mix of very British pragmatism.

Random pic of Daisy Markham, this film is digitally-speaking, deep, deep undercover...

Joan Ritz – Nash’s Maggie in Hobson – plays the mother of an alpine family befriended by Robert whose husband dies – literally slipping away – while out on the slopes with the former Architect. The family is distraught, even Robert feels it, but we’re all so fragile. For himself, Robert feels too much obligation for his obsessively devoted mother to move on, only when she dies can he decide for himself whether to commit to more love with Bernadine.

There aren’t many films that address the ties that bind in such a direct way and Percy Nash’s film is quite unlike any other British silent that I’ve seen in this respect. It’s not so much that nothing happens – plenty does – but the drama is all in the emotion and not the action which is underplayed to the extent of sometimes being off-screen.

All of this was duly noted in an accompaniment from Cyrus Gabrisch who relished the emotional pacing and dynamic scenery, filling those spaces with compact lines that weaved around the delicate drama on screen. It must have been interesting to play for such a “narrow band” picture - especially when you haven't seen it beforehand - but Cyrus’ musical statements defused slowly along with the rarefied flavours of the film. 

French Soldiers in Bolibar

The Marquis of Bolibar [AKA The Betrayal] (1928), Stephen Horne

If Ships was perhaps too real, our final film of the day was magically-real with strange things afoot in the Peninsular War in 1811, with the French lined up against the British and the Spanish, occupied, and stuck in the middle.

Directed with panache by Walter Summers and photographed superbly by Jack Parker, this was a good-looking if patchy film shot partly in Malta - in Ħaż-Żebbuġ and Mdina - featuring thousands of Maltese extras for the battle scenes. Perhaps unsurprisingly given Summers action-film experience – this was the film made directly after The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) - the story opens in dynamic style as French soldiers move in on a British encampment. Led by Lieutenant Donop (Michael Cogan) they emerge from dark smoky waters like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now (kind of) and sneak up the shore to spy on the enemy.

It’s a set piece that isn’t quite matched through the rest of the film but there are many stylish moments that come close and whilst we were warned that the plot may be a little wayward, it did make sense in an uncanny way, helped in no small measure by the spirited accompaniment from Stephen Horne fresh from recent travels to the Americas and taking this all in his stride.

Elissa Landi

The story revolves around a promise from the titular Marquis (Jerrold Robertshaw) to help the allies re-take his town through three warnings. The first will be a plume of smoke which is their signal to block off the town, destroy all bridges (there are some explosive moments) and prevent any relief from outside. The second will be the church organ playing at which point the people will rise up and civil disruption will distract the French. The final and decisive message will be the delivery of the Marquis’ knife, signalling that the town is ready for storming. The Marquis is confident and predicts that he’ll easily find his way back into Bolibar and be eating off the table at French army HQ. Unfortunately, Lt Donop has heard every word and makes good his escape to report back.

The tone changes – almost alarmingly - after the breathless news is broken and we meet the officers, each of whom has enjoyed a liaison with the Colonel Bellay’s late wife Francoise-Marie (Elissa Landi). There’s young blonde Lt. Gunther (Carl Harbord) whose flashback reverie is rudely interrupted by the boorish Captain Brockendorf (Evelyn Roberts) who, despite the impediments of character and moustache also enjoyed a dalliance as did Dapt. Egolstein (Cecil Barry) and, of course, our brave Donop. As for the Colonel (Hubert Carter) it’s hard to see what the young woman saw in him, but he remains obsessed with this lost love.

Bolibar does indeed smuggle himself into the French officers’ mess but it found out and sentenced to a firing squad. Before he dies though he tries to speak to his friends but then enigmatically tells the men that God will them in what needs to be done.

Before the Lord can start moving in mysterious ways, we learn that the Colonel has discovered a young Spanish woman who looks exactly like Francoise-Marie, La Monita (also played by Elissa Landi – so versatile!). Naturally, the officers also see the similarity and fall for her as much as F-M Mark 1. There follows a courting that is almost all a-forgetting that there’s a bloomin’ war on and, needless to say, the men’s actions start to fulfil the Marquis’ prophecies almost as if there was an invisible guiding hand…

Cast of thousands

It’s hokum but enjoyable and it’s not always about the quality it’s exactly the experience of sharing a film in plush seats with very fine accompaniment. On this point Mr Horne delivered providing musical special effects were sometimes the film lacked them: a duet inside from the Sun.

As we walked outside, blinking in the unseasonal bright, we managed to get all of the way across the road before entering the welcoming shadows of a public house.

Day One done and the next day was to be even hotter…

Take your seats and remove your hats.