A tale of two movies… Mädchen in Uniform (1931), BFI Dual Format, Out Now!

“What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love in all its forms…”

 

First time viewer here and I have to say that this film is more complex than I expected and absolutely all the more intriguing for that. As wily producer Carl Froelich had intended, the relationship between the two leading actors is your main expectation and yet the narrative runs far deeper than even that, ground-breaking though it is. This is a film about girls in uniform and by that I mean the discipline of the Prussian military hierarchy, children marching, being trained in denial and traditional Junker strengths; books are forbidden, graven images of film stars, letters home, compassion… all love is seemingly denied, not to mention that between a girl and a woman. The school is there to make the “mothers of soldiers”, to feed the Prussian/German military machine.

 

Bibi Berki, who provides a superb essay in the booklet accompanying this set and also excerpts from her brilliant podcast, The Kiss, about the making of this film, suggests that there were essentially two films being made during production of Mädchen in Uniform. There’s the populist drama Froelich aimed to connect with developing sensitivities about female sexuality post Marlene, and homosexuality after earlier films such as Anders als die Andern (1919) and Sex in Chains (1928) subtitled Die Sexualnot der Strafgefangenen – the sexual distress of prisoners - giving it a passing link to the institutionalised characters in Mädchen. Then there was the film that the director Leontine Sagan and the writer Christa Winsloe wanted; one with equal daring but deeper intellectual roots. What’s more, Christa not only wrote this story, she lived it… falling in love with one of her female teachers who ended up having to leave the school.

Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele

Berki covers all of these incredible personalities with so much depth and eloquence, providing the finest of audio essays covering their backstories and the making of the film with the help of primary and secondary sources from crew and cast. Hertha Thiele provides a lot of the detail for the filming and she had firm opinions even during the making of her first film. Thiele had a long and interesting career and I chiefly know her for the left wing questioning of Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? (1932) after which she refused to work for the Nazis and ended up in East Germany after the war, resuming her career there.

 

Thiele – 22 at the time of filming - had played the part of 14-year-old “half-orphan”, Manuela in one of Leontine Sagan’s stage productions of Winsloe’s play – a lot of the same cast were used and this helps explain how the first-time director was able to complete the shoot in just three weeks. Interviewed when she was 71-72 in 1980 (by Karola Gramman and Heide Schlüpmann), the actress was quite sure which film she’d been making: “I really don't want to make a great deal of [...] or account for a film about lesbianism here. That's far from my mind, because the whole thing of course is also a revolt against the cruel Prussian education system."

Dorothea's exacted emoting

Surprisingly, given their chemistry on screen, she considered her co-star Dorothea Wieck too “restrained” but, as Berki suggests, this is the difference between a stage actor and an experienced screen one. Wieck is the best performer on screen with nuanced expression that remains poignant – she is the heart of “both” films; her unknowable affection for her pupil part of the continuum of love referred to in the above quote. She loves all of her girls and does not see her compassion undermining either authority or leadership; she’s an inspiration to the students in more than romantic ways. In her later interviews, Thiele also felt Leontine Sagan was too intellectual so I’m not sure we have the definitive voice on intent but there is so much rich context to work with.

 

Leontine certainly had a defined agenda and insisted that the location “must be saturated in Prussianism…” and they found the perfect place in Potsdam which is where Christa Winsloe had gone to school. It was a military orphanage which had the right atmosphere and the perfect six storey staircase around which many of the film's key moments occur.

 

You’re struck by Leontine’s “intellectual” ambition for the film from the opening montage of Prussian statues and militaristic music and the shifting from the sound of soldier’s feet to the schoolgirls marching. Her direction is remarkable, but she had plenty of skilled support from Froelich, his cinematographers, Reimar Kuntze and Franz Weihmayr as well as editor Oswald Hafenrichter, who later worked on The Third Man. That said, it’s hard to take too many plaudits away from Leontine for this vibrant and visually coherent first "go".

Emilia Unda inspects

The other pupils are used dynamically throughout the film, flowing around the action and providing bubbling adolescent energy - the raw material that needs taming. Against this is the upright and tense headmistress, Mother Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden (the imposing character actress Emilia Unda), as rigid as any Oberst, who believes that little girls should be seen and only heard when instructed to make a noise. She represents an entire class structure based on emotional discipline as evidenced by her Excellency von Ehrenhardt, Manuela's aunt (Gertrud de Lalsky) who describes her late sister’s daughter in disparaging terms and her soldier father as having “no idea” how to educate her.

 

Manuela is vulnerable having not long lost her mother and, as she enters the darkened school, her spirits are gradually lifted as she meets the girls who will come to make her life bearable. There’s the welcoming Marga (Ilse Winter), Lilli (Erika Biebrach), Ilse von Treischke (Charlotte Witthauer) but most of all there’s the rebellious Ilse von Westhagen (Ellen Schwanneke) who from her first appearance in the school choir strikes you as a source of passionate honesty.

 

Almost all the girls here have a crush on Miss von Bernburg... 'Tell me, is it true that she kisses you at night?'

 

Ellen Schwanneke in rapture

Ilse it is who has posters of Hans Albers on the inside of her locker – strictly forbidden – as she asks the other girls what it is that films stars have, Mia von Wollin (Barabara Pirk) replies “sex appeal, nicht?” This is the first overt reference to sex but it follows on from a startling exchange featuring Ilse discussing the crush many of the girls have on Governess Fräulein von Bernburg (Wieck), who breaks the code of von Nordeck zur Nidden, by providing something of the kindness her students are missing.

 

This battle between the gifted and highly effective "liberal" and the Head, plus her acolytes, runs throughout the film with the former wanting to be “a friend to the children” she leads and the others ignoring emotional intelligence and focusing only on authority and repression.

 

The most famous sequence in the whole film features von Bernburg walking around the dorm at bedtime, slowly kissing each girl on the head, each one eagerly awaiting her touch in a very ambiguous way. Finally she arrives at the new girl and as Manuella throws herself at her in an embrace, she very deliberately kisses her full on the lips. It’s startling all these years later and apparently the distributors at the time wanted a lot more kissing (!?) but what is really passing between pupil and teacher?

 

First meeting on the stairs

Von Bernburg has already talked to Manuella about the death of her mother and she recognises her grief and need for affection. This provocative kiss is certainly more than maternal and for Leontine is surely transgressive in the context of a militaristic school whilst for writer Christa, there’s wish fulfilment and recognition of her romantic experience. We know what Hertha Thiele felt but I really wish we had Dorothea Wieck’s take.

It’s a tribute to the film and these makers that there is still much to discuss in terms of the significance of their work. There’s enough here for many times the normal length of my blog posts, suffice to say that this is a major film that is thoroughly deserving of the restoration it has received and this superb package from BFI.

 

The critique of Prussian education and society would still be there without the homosexuality but the love between the women is vital to the film’s power both as a motivator of the major characters but also as a recognition of not just Christa’s lived and loved experience but that of millions of women in Germany and beyond. A sexual relationship between a teenage student and her teacher would of course be wrong; Manuella is a child after all, but love – in all its forms - is love at any age.

The (school) play's the thing...

In addition to the excellent work from Bibi Berki, Episodes 7 to 10 of Tempest Productions’ 14-part podcast The Kiss and an essay on Christa Winsloe, there are essays from So Mayer on the film’s place in the queer canon, Chrystel Oloukoï on its remarkable director and Henry K Miller on the British cinema that helped promote the film. Chrystel also provides a video essay on Women and Sexuality in Weimar Cinema. Feature commentary for the main feature is from film historian Jenni Olson.

 

As is traditional, the BFI also fill out the disc with some wonders from their archive under the heading: How to be a Woman and with an explanatory essay form film historian Sarah Wood. These include the magnificent Tilly and the Fire Engines (1911) featuring everyone’s favourite nasty women, Tilly as played by Alma Taylor and Sally played by Chrissie White, who  made comedic trouble in so many films. It’s a hoot especially with a smashing accompaniment from Bioscope allumni Lillian Henley – a modern day member of Tilly’s gang!!

Alma Taylor and Chrissie White

There’s also Hints and Hobbies No.11 – ‘Hints to the Ladies on Jiu-Jitsu’ (1926), A Day at St Christopher’s College and School (1920s) and 4 and 20 Fit Girls (1940), sponsored by the National Fitness Council for England and Wales.

 

Thank you, Bibi, BFI and the original film makers. ***** all round.

 

1.      You can order the set for a very reasonable rate at the BFI’s online shop, link right here.

 

2.     Bibi Berki’s podcast is highly recommended and you can find all the episodes of her 14-part podcast, The Kiss, here on Spotify.

 

3.      Hertha Thiele’s interviews with Schlüpmann and Gramman of Johan Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, can be read here. As always with Thiele and others on the left, it’s sobering to hear of what happened in the years following this film and others.

2019 vision… illuminating a year in the dark.

Who knows where the time goes eh? The centenary of 1919 passed by with brutal speed leaving me reeling in its wake trying to grab hold of something solid to make sense of it all. This was the year of going with the flow; a mad dash from Italy to Korea to Leicester and back to Italy via a Weimar Germany that increasingly felt uncomfortably familiar.

There’s no respite, strong rumours suggest that the Twenties are about to be re-booted and we can only hope that means a return of style and ambition across every walk of life. So, in no particular order, and with sincerest thanks to everyone who programmed, introduced, projected and played along with the 120+ silent films I saw in cinema… here we go: fourteen favourites but it could have been forty.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway...

1.       The Lodger (1927), Neil Brand score, Ben Palmer conducting Orchestra San Marco, Pordenone

My third year at Le Giornate and to get through eight days of cultural and social excess – those Aperols won’t Spritz themselves - and still find myself watching this film with such alert glee, says so much about Hitchcock’s visuals and Neil Brand’s score. In my first year I’d nodded off for Lubitsch’s Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (sorry Ernst) but watching this most re-watchable of silent films with Neil’s score sinking in even more, I felt fully connected in this cinematic home from home.

There is just so much to process in Pordenone with up to 14 hours of film a day. It was a good year for William S Hart – with a retrospective showing how his bad-to-good man, with the love of a good woman, themes evolved – Estonian silents and a delightful Marion Davis film, Beverly of Graustark (1926), which proved a cross-dressing delight! Read all about it in my daily posts here.

You know who it is.

2.       Brooksie on the big screen: It's the Old Army Game (1926), with European Silent Screen Virtuosi, Bristol Old Vic, Slapstick Festival also Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), BFI

There aren’t that many Louise Brooks’ films but I want to see them all on the big screen and this year I added two more and was not disappointed. Louise is fresh as a daisy alongside an occasionally tiresome WC Fields in Army Game, her gleeful reactions just beautiful to watch especially in a room full of people experiencing the same thing. Diary is at another level as a film and I’ve waited years to see it on screen eschewing my multiples DVDs and Blu-rays… with a smashing intro from Pabstspert Pamela Hutchison unseen Louise filled the screen almost as powerfully as for Pandora.

At the Crossroads

3.       Crossroads of Youth (1934), with Lee Jinwook and Cho Hee Bong, BFI Early Korean Cinema

2019 was the centenary of Korean Cinema with a season featuring what remains of the very earliest films made under Japanese occupation as well as an excellent 14^th edition of the Korean Film Festival later in the year.

Crossroads is the only silent survivor of this turbulent period and had been painstakingly reconstructed to establish narrative and visual sense. This was a silent film screening unlike any other I’ve ever witnessed, in addition to a Korean Byeonsa – a more active version of a Japanese Benshi – performed with gleeful energy by Cho Hee Bong, we had two actors, Hwang Minsu and Park Hee-von who sang parts echoing the central love story with West-end panache. Accompaniment was provided by composer Lee Jinwook on keyboards, Shin Jia on accordion, Oh Seung Hee on double-bass and Sim Jeongeun on violin an ear-popping combination of styles that seamlessly supported the narrative on and off screen.

The Miller and the Sweep (1897)

4.       Screening the Victorians, with Bryony Dixon and Stephen Horne, BFI

This was another marvellous trip through the oldest BFI archives accompanied by curator Bryony Dixon and Stephen Horne and it featured some of the most impressive footage from the Victorian cinema era, 1896 to 1901. We’d seen glimpses of Queen Victoria before but this screening of Queen Victoria’s Last Visit to Ireland (1900) from a print held by MOMA, was the clearest glimpse yet of the Empress as she greeted Dublin crowds smiling and wearing sunglasses – yes, smiling!

5.       Happy Birthday, Mr Paul!, with Ian Christie and John Sweeney, BFI

It was a good year all round for Victorian film with Ian Christie giving two thoroughly entertaining show and tells at the BFI and the Bioscope on RW Paul, the father of British cinema.

During his ten years of peak activity, Paul undoubtedly advance the art of cinema as both a technical innovator and an artistic one: bringing both together in forms of new expression. The World’s first two-scene film was (probably) Paul’s Come Along, Do (1898) which has now had a fragment of its long-lost second scene - inside the art gallery - restored from one of his illustrated catalogues, another innovation in marketing terms – take that Mr Edison or more specifically, William Dickson who did the work the Big E was happy to patent!

It was good to fill out the backstory of this key figure and Christie’s book, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema (Chicago University Press) will be on many a list this Christmas.

Valeska Gert in Joyless mood.

6.       The Joyless Street (1925) with John Sweeney, BFI Weimar Season

The BFI spoiled us with some excellent strands this year, I loved the Antonioni season and of course we have the ongoing musicals season which covers a huge amount of ground from the Hollywood greats to fantastic British and French films: First a Girl and Les Umbrellas de Cherbourg being two standouts. For me though the Weimar Cinema season curated by Margaret Deriaz was not only the best of the year but also for many years, from a silent perspective at least.

Between 1919 and 1933, Germany produced over 3,500 films, second only to Hollywood in scale and productivity and it was a delight to see some of the cream of what remains: from the madness of Opium (1919) to the hard-hitting politics of Kuhle Wampe (1932) and Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (1931) via so many “key texts” such as Der Golem (1920), Dr Mabuse (1922) and The Student of Prague (1926).

It's impossible to pick a favourite so I will opt for Pabst’s Joyless Street illuminated by Queen Asta Neilsen and Princess Greta Garbo along with King John Sweeney’s unstinting improvisation and utterly controlled musical narrative.

Another joyless street

7.       Sylvester (1923), Frank Bockius and Stephen Horne, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna

It was hot, hot, hot in Bologna with the usual bewildering range of choices and memorable outdoor screenings in the Piazza Maggiore of my favourite Keaton with a restored The Cameraman (1928) followed by Charlie’s turn with The Circus (1927), a film I’d not seen and yet which was one of the funniest I’ve seen all year.

There was no escaping Germany though and Frank Bockius and Stephen Horne’s accompaniment for Lupe Pick’s grim Sylvester (1923) under the stars with the Piazzetta Pasolini’s carbon-arc projector revealed an horrific family struggle taking place in the backroom of a bar on a street filled with New Year’s revelry. The two accompanists took turns in carrying the line and it was fascinating to hear a percussion-led musical narrative.

Our Betty Balfour

8.       Love, Life and Laughter (1923), with Meg Morley, London Film Festival Archive Gala

Unseen since 1923, recovered by a cinema owner in Holland and restored by a multi-national team, this was one of those screenings when you walk out onto the Southbank with a spring in your step, cracking a wonky smile with a shard of bliss warming your core courtesy of Britain’s Queen of Happiness and Australia’s Princess of the Pianoforte. Music and movie combining in a genuinely soulful way to utterly change my mood on a rotten Brexit Thursday… forget all that, let’s have a laugh; let’s live a little… is precisely what Betty Balfour urged.

Ita means it.

9.       Tonka of the Gallows (1930), with Stephen Horne, Phoenix Cinema

This film was one of the hits of this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival and understandably drew a substantial audience of the capital’s silent cineastes to the Finchley Phoenix. We’d come to see the serene Slovenian Ita Rina who’s delicate beauty underpinned her quite staggering performance in this film. Add in Stephen Horne’s alchemical accompaniment (he also played for it in San Francisco) and we were lost in that mystical meld of sound, vision and venue which leaves you at the mercy of your own emotional response.

10.       The Cat and the Canary (1927), with Jeff Rapsis, Kennington Bioscope

One of so many excellent screenings from the National Treasure that is the Cinema Museum. Here we were treated to a watch of Kevin Brownlow’s own 35mm – I know! - one that resulted from his own restoration for Photoplay. We also got an introduction full of the insider jokes and insights from the man who – nearly – met them all, capturing silent stars on tape from the fifties to the eighties and preserving the oral history of the birth of film.

Guest pianist Jeff Rapsis had flown over from Boston in the morning and was full of praise for the Bioscope – and it’s (thankfully) ongoing contribution to keeping alive the art of improvised accompaniment for which a live audience is just essential. “I have no sheet music, I have nothing prepared I just go with the film and the audience…” and, in front of our very eyes, he performed the magic.

Lady Eleanor

11.       Souls for Sale (1923) with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope Silent Weekender

I have a well-publicized soft spot for Eleanor Boardman and also love films about films of which Souls is one of the very first. The glimpses behind the scenes are precious, with Erich von Stroheim seen directing Greed, giving Jean Hersholt instructions, and Charlie Chaplin playing along by over-actively directing Mem/Eleanor in a “scene” from Woman of Paris. Elsewhere you can glimpse Hobart Bosworth, Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, Raymond Griffith, June Mathis, Marshall Neilan, Claire Windsor & many more! William Haines is also in there, his first credited appearance, as Pinky the assistant director to Richard Dix’s square-jawed Frank Claymore.

Kevin Brownlow introduced on his birthday and explained that the film was partly a PR exercise to show that after numerous scandals, Hollywood wasn’t a bad place, full of upstanding professionals. Meg Morley accompanied in fine style matching the epic with the intimate with trace elements of Liszt amongst the jazzed assurance!

Asta catches a tram and a man.

12.   Claire (1924)/ Afgrunden (1910) with John Sweeney and Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

Two films that showed how women’s stories were front and centre of the new medium in Weimar Germany and Denmark. Claire is convoluted fun and John Sweeney enlightened the narrative with romantic flourishes and dramatic interventions that ensured we were firmly focused on the extraordinary expressiveness of Lya de Puti. Michell Facey introduced and told of the Hungarian actress’ success in Germany – including Variety and her off-screen/in-trailer relationship with Emil Jannings – before she tried her (bad) luck in Hollywood…

No misgivings about the quality and significance of the first of the films, Afgrunden (1910) staring the uncannily naturalistic Asta Nielsen who is undeniably one of the inventors of screen acting and her ability to express cinematically – nuanced and naturalistic – is something to behold. As Angela Dalle Vacche has said, seemed to anticipate the close-up's subliminal impact.

The alternate title for this film is The Woman Always Pays and even as early as 1910, Asta was questioning why this should be with a character who is dependent on male patronage and who cannot be free of the “male passions” that plague Lya too. Colin Sell accompanied with remarkably steady hands despite the mounting on-screen excitement of Asta’s raunchy dance round a ranch hand in the most figure-hugging dress in the World.

Ghost of a chance

13.   The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (Le fantôme du Moulin Rouge) (1925) with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne, British Silent Film Festival

This was the UK premier of Lobster films restoration of René Clair’s first feature and, as with his earlier short film, Paris qui dort, it is a science fantasy film in which the human drama is magnified rather than obscured as is so often the case. The dynamic duo of Baldry and Horne provided yet another sublime combination taking it in turns to wring unexpected sounds and sumptuous lines as we floated through this strange adventure.

"Life's a walking shadow, nah-nah-na-nah-nah!"

14.   He Who Gets Slapped (1924), with Taz Modi and Fraser Bowles, Barbican

To see this film projected from a 35mm print is a special treat and all praise to the Barbican team for sourcing this copy from a private collection in France. He Who Gets Slapped has not been digitally restored, which is a crime given its qualities, and probably has not been screened like this for many a year in the UK.

Not all sonic experiments from the Barbican work but I enjoyed the mesmeric and wistful score from Taz Modi who plays a kind of hybrid-jazz, accompanied by expressive cello from Fraser Bowles. Taz’s piano figures weaved patterns over the narrative rather than matching specific events; a tonal rather than a harmonised duet and which, in the context of such a powerfully visual and humane film, worked very well. More please Barbican!

So, just to be clear:

1.       The Christmas we get we deserve.

2.       I (therefore do not) wish it could be Christmas every day.

3.       All I want for Christmas is a screening of Gosta Berling...

See you in The New Twenties!

Five fingers of fear... Eerie Tales (1919), BFI with Stephen Horne

This was my twenty third Weimar screening of the year in which Europe celebrated its centenary from Kennington, to Cambridge and Bologna to Pordenone via a superb season at the BFI in the early Summer. I’d even seen Claudio Macor’s new play, Different From the Others based on Richard Oswald’s ground-breaking film of the same name and featuring a cast of young performers interpreting the roles of the Weimar superstars, Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel and Anita Berber, a woman who loved life and narcotics all too much but who inspired so many. Eerie Tales (aka Uncanny Stories or Unheimliche Geschichten) was made directly after and featured the same three stars.

For today’s screening we had our own Weimar dream team, with an informed and entertaining introduction from Veidtspert Miranda Gower-Qian and accompaniment from Stephen Horne. Miranda explained the background to the film in the theatre of Max Reinhardt with all three leads well-established in theatre and cabaret. Veidt was already renowned as The Walking Cadaver whilst Berber was a huge and outrageously successful cabaret star, the three knew each other well and, as Miranda said, there’s a sense of familiarity and playfulness informing the film which helps to compensate for its limited budget and the fact that there remain missing segments even after the restoration.

Richard Oswald had already directed a number of literary adaptations (his second name taken in tribute to a character from Ibsen's Ghosts) as well as horror films and the episodic opera Tales of Hoffman before he came to Eerie Tales. The film features five stories all framed by a sequence in an antiquarian bookshop in which paintings of The Devil (Schünzel), Death (Veidt) and a Strumpet (Berber), become animated after closing time and relax by leafing through the stock for the most sinister stories.

The Apparition by Anselma Heine

Here Veidt plays a man who rescues a woman (Berger) from the violent attentions of her former husband (Schünzel). No matter where they go the deranged man follows and the two soon fall under each other’s spell: hero and rescued damsel. They take rooms in a hotel and the woman, feeling unwell retires early… the man goes downstairs to enjoy some after dinner drinks and, returning with un-chivalrous intent in the early hours, he finds her room not just empty but cleared of all furniture and with the walls scorched bare… What madness can this be? The answer is still shocking.

Schünzel clearly relishes the chance to extend his flexible features as the spurned husband – his face contorted by the madness of rejection.

The Hand by Robert Liebmann

It’s Veidt’s turn to show his uncanny expressiveness in the second segment. He and Schünzel are in competition over Anita again and, like gentlemen, they agree to throw dice for her. Schünzel throws a ten but Veidt responds with an improbably eleven – to the winner the spoils! But things don’t quite work that way as the sore loser throttles the victor who falls dead, his hand twisted by the desperate final struggle.

The cheat takes advantage of the girl’s grief but if he thinks he’s in the clear he has another thing coming…

This section gives us a precious glimpse of Anita Berber performing on stage as Schünzel’s character looks on before seeing a ghostly Veidt stage left. Berber has arguably the least to do in Eerie Tales (she dies twice which is unfortunate) but the trained dancer carries herself well and brings a cabaret cutting edge to proceedings: she knows where the next whiskey bar is alright and much more besides.

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

Next up is a classic from the man who may well have invented both the detective and horror genres: The Godfather of Ghoul anyone? Once again, our three are caught in a love triangle and as the debonair Conrad sweeps in to win the maid, Schünzel snuffs out the object of attraction whilst at the same time throwing her precious pet cat against the wall.

Veidt smells a rat but the police are baffled: yet how many lives does a cat actually have. As usual with Poe it’s the very matter-of-factness of his narrative that evokes the greatest chill…

The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson

Oswald brings a consistent creepiness to all of these stories not just through his use of the same actors but through his expressive visuals and – forced - economy. This tale of a most unusual gentleman’s club is given considerable spin by Veidt’s unnerving turn as the titular club president but the director’s eye for detail has him use repeated motifs of playing cards and an expressionist ticking clock to ramp up an unnatural tension before Stevenson’s more conventionally heroic tale twists its way through.

The Haunting by Richard Oswald

The last tale is written by the director and is the lightest: perhaps he wanted to send his audience away with a spring in their step after the preceding death and disturbance. The intertitles are in verse and the cast dressed in fairy tale garb for the story of an injured knight who takes advantage of his host’s generosity by making merry with his wife. Schünzel plays the bawdy Baron and Anita Berber gets her chance to shine as the girl who can hardly say no. Her husband (Veidt) decides to teach both a lesson and mild amusement ensues… with tension maintained by three far from straight faces!

Stephen Horne matched Oswald’s tones with his usual array of instrumentation and clearly relished throwing gothic chords in the more extreme moments as well as laying down uncanny themes on accordion and flute.

Eerie Tales is clearly a staging post between the major works of Weimar gothic but it’s very entertaining and with a sold out NFT 2, clearly a popular choice in a year in which the BFI has programmed boldly from this era and hopefully seen the returns. Here’s to more in 2020!

Anita dances

Desperate housewife… The Devious Path/Abwege (1928), with Stephen Horne, BFI Weimar Season

And so ended the BFI’s excellent Weimar Cinema season and all thanks to Margaret Deriaz for programming so many of the best and most representative films of the period. Some of my favourites have of course been Pabst’s and this film shows the director at his subtle best turning what could have been a light romantic tale into an intense psycho-drama that plumbs the depths of naughty, bawdy, gaudy, snorty Berlin club culture.

Pabst brings out the very best of Brigitte Helm as he did with a nervy Garbo and a fearless Brooks, with a mix of instruction, editing and the flying camerawork of Theodor Sparkuhl. She’s almost ever-present and we see every delicate transition as she flits from intense frustration to anger, from desire to fear, hate to love… her body thrown into acute angles just as her unique features shift through gears most of us don’t have. She’s the only thing really happening in the film which is a minimalist story of suburban disconnection stirring horrific extremes in her character Irene Beck.

Pabst digs into her portrayal and the tension is not just surface but disturbed. Helm was a relatively inexperienced actress at this point, just one year on from Maria but she had already worked with Pabst on Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney and there was obviously a connection with the actress willing to commit so much. Occasionally she over-steps but quickly corrects and is always inhabited by the moment; a true “silent actress” supple and sensuous whether tortured or teasing.

But yes, Gustav Diessl is also in it as her neglectful husband Thomas and he’s full of dark-eyed tricks of his own. He too can transmit mixed signals and come over all doe-eyed destroyed seconds after being in control… he’s a very shadowy presence next to Brigitte’s shining light but… casting, lighting, directing will all do that for you.

Thomas is, heh, married to his work and won’t show Irene much attention let alone a good time and their young marriage has hit the rocks at just the wrong point. Irene is much too much to not be noticed and artist Walter Frank (Jack Trevor) can’t help but be drawn to her… constantly sketching his affection in a studio dominated by her image. Irene and Walter plan an escape but Thomas spots the clues and arrives just in time to bring his wife back.

Irene is not to be constrained and breaks away to find her friends, led by Liane (Joyless Street’s Hertha von Walther) in a nightclub. This “den of iniquity” as Councillor Möller (Fritz Odemar) calls it, offers all kinds of temptation and as Irene sits knocking back the champagne her eye is caught by a lone woman, Anita Haldern (Ilse Bachmann). Eventually she follows her behind a curtain emerging somewhat refreshed by powders unknown as Pabst ticks off as many illicit activities as he can.

Irene dances, flirts with a boxer Sam Taylor (Nico Turoff) – who couldn’t be more different than Thomas, and makes sure Walter also sees her independence. It’s a heck of a night and Sparkuhl’s camera draws us, hand-held, into the heart of the action, inebriating the viewer with images.

No less impressive is the scene once Irene gets home to find Thomas lying still in the darkness; the couple re-unite and all seems forgiven until Thomas spots the very odd hairy-chested man-doll Irene had been given at the club. It doesn’t look much to me but as a token of unabashed male sexual interest it’s clear enough to him. The row resumes and the new dawn fades…

Irene now begins a liaison with Boxer Sam who we see soaring in a display of the animalistic masculinity Thomas does not provide, and as he asks Walter to draw her picture, it looks like artist vs athlete unless Thomas the Accountant can intervene…

Ultimately the “devious” path is more about truth and fidelity than sex, drugs and nightclubbing and is very engaging, emotionally heightened cinema that relies on the depth of feeling rather than drama. It looks sensational partly because both Brigitte and Gustav do, and this new restoration, shown at last year’s Berlinale shows this off to maximum effect.

Of course, the experience was also enhanced by another of Stephen Horne’s emotionally-intelligent accompaniments – as fluid as Fräulein Helm and dark and serious as Herr Diesel. A subtle mix of strong lines and syncopated sympathy one senses that Stephen may have played in more than a few Berlin bars…

Two months and a couple of dozen superb films, the BFI’s Weimar Season has been the best silent film strand in my time – I’m a very late adopted having started in 2010. The audience seem to have been there and we have enjoyed the show.

Ich danke dir Margaret und dem BFI!

Interiors...

Close-ups...

Obsession...

Disdain...

Nightclubbing...

And?