Quirks, strangeness and charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Seven

And so, to penultimate day and, as the minstrel sang, “I’m still standing…” or rather sitting, a lot, in the dark, watching. Today there was charm Sonia Delaunay’s innovative shaping and it was approaching midnight when Mae Murray moved to a convent, taught children, had her ankles runover by truck and, oh my, was inspired to take up her bee-stung lips and walk! If there was such a thing as a typical day at Le Giornate, this wouldn’t have been it, at all.

 

So, let’s start at the very ending as that’s a very good place to start as dozens of cinemutophiles (TM P. Hutchinson of Worthing) staggered out of the Verdi trying to process what we’d just seen with Circe, the Enchantress (1924) which progressed from a saucy mythical entree, Circe/Cecilie Brunner (Murray) turning men into pigs (I know, right?), through nightclub low-jinks with her gaggle of male admirers, to the aforementioned redemption sequence. It was undoubtedly great fun and considering it was a lost film for so long, a miracle of mythical proportions that it exists at all especially as it shows us so much of why Mae was a true star.

 

While she is more than capable of inhabiting the role of an enchantress ancient and modern, we also get a chance to see her dance as well as pout and she can dance having, as Artemis Willis puts it in the catalogue notes, pioneered the path from Ziegfeld Girl to Hollywood star. There’s one number influenced by modern ballet – say Denishawn or even Isadora Duncan – then a dance with a jazz ensemble. This is American cabaret and there’s even a moment when Cecilie jumps into a water feature in the club and her men follow her. There’s one gay character, not even coded and there’s William Haines too who always has a twinkle!

 

Interesting that this festival has feature both Billy and his friend Eleanor Boardman who won the "New Faces of 1922" contest and travelled to Hollywood together. He’s good as Cecilie’s most passionately lost paramour surrounded by harder hearts in the group all still unable to resist their lady’s allure. It’s only when surgeon Peter Van Martyn (James Kirkwood, Sr.) arrives on the scene that things change as he’s got the moral strength to stand apart and Cecilie finds that very attractive.

 

The film has some ten minutes missing but the sense remains even if the final turn-around is a jolt. It matters not as Murray the Enchantress is in full bloom. Willis quotes Florence Lawrence writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, “The story…gives the piquant star a vivid and chameleon-like characterization. She is alternately the spoiled and petted darling of a circle of rich adorers, and the wistful woman, beseeching attention from the one worthwhile man in the whole of her acquaintance.”

 

Accompaniment was from a spirited trio comprising Günter Buchwald (piano and violin), Aaron van Oudenallen (sax and woodwind) plus Frank Bockius who I believe is a percussionist and without whom no GCM 42 day is complete!

 

Peter C. Leska, Mady Christians and Diana Karenne

Eine Frau Von Format (1928) proved to be the most delightful of any of the Ruritanian stream, with a superb performance from Mady Christians which caused my hardened heart to melt with a pitch perfect performance of wit and intelligence, timing and a smile that charms as it disarms. Christians enjoyed a long and successful career including as Priscilla Queen of the Deserters in The Runaway Princess (1929) and many more. She’s got such presence and whilst obviously not a stunner in the manner of Russian diva, Diana Karenne, she draws the eye with expressiveness and energy.

 

She plays Dschilly Zileh Bey the ambassador from Türkisien who has been sent to negotiate the acquisition of an island from Princess Petra of Silistria (Karenne, who it was good to see again after the rediscoveries of her work screened at this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Bologna). In this she must compete with the ambassador from neighbouring Illyria, Count Géza von Tököly (Peter C. Leska) and we’re into classic romcom territory from the get-go. The Count tries to woo Princess Petra and moves her reception forward a day so that he can be alone with the Princess, but Dschilly responds by reversing that and leaving him to think on his feet as guests arrive in their dozens to rain on his private parade. This is only the beginning of a light-hearted competition that demonstrates its operatic origins as it makes light of the diplomatic love triangle, if that’s what it is?

 

In their catalogue essay, Amy Sargeant and Jay Weissberg quote a positive review from La Dépêche (02.08.1930) “It’s a lively, graceful work, with all the colour of Viennese operetta and in a thoroughly modern vein. It takes place in the midst of enchanting locales, on a marvellous island that bears a strong resemblance to those of Lake Maggiore, and the perfume of the Borromean Islands wafts ceaselessly in the luminous air.”

 

Meg Morley provided her own musical travelogue with accompaniment that was as airily in touch with the film’s tone as well as location in time and space. There were some sumptuous recurring motifs and the playing generated the same good humour as Mady on screen, in terms of all-round engagement a festival highlight!

Hope Hampton

Now, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style and for sure Sonia Delaunay’s stands out a mile. Here we had a collection of short films showing her design as well as her influence in the case of Ballet Mécanique (1924), that classic of cubist/Dada cinema from Fernand Léger, a member of the Delaunay circle, along with Dudley Murphy. Then there was striking haute couture in two-colour Kodachrome which highlighted model and actress Hope Hampton’s shock of red hair as much as the designs from Vionnett, Poiret et al. Hampton was in The Gold Diggers (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), The Truth About Women (1924) and fair few others into the talkies.

 

Others shorts from Germaine Dulac and Marcel Duchamp were shown along with L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (1926) directed by Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay and The Delaunay Keller-Dorian Colour Test (1928). All of which made my chance meeting with some friends in Venice and our visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection make artistic sense of the last eight days. Cinema was part of the artistic innovation of the early part of the last century and there was a boldness and dynamism which still strikes as “new” and challenging in 2023.

 

Masterclass student Andrea Goretti provided artful accompaniment! Welcome on board.

 

Now for the quickfire round:

 

The slapstick special today included Modern Love (1929) which gave a rare chance to hear Charley Chase talk, the film was an early sound film with a mix of sound and music with title cards before we get to dialogue. Charley was in his usual mess as his dress designing wife (Kathryn Crawford) has had to keep their relationship secret and then gets an offer of work in Paris with a new customer, François Renault played by the super Jean Hersholt. It’s a fine mess but you know our hero will win through and it’ll be a lot of fun in the process. It must be said that this hybrid format was not that popular at the time and the recording quality of the voices was not hi-fidelity, age or original process/both.

 

The Oath of the Sword (1914) a story of a Japanese family whose son goes to study in the USA and who pledges an oath with his beloved to return on his return. Time passes, as does he with flying colours but all this Americanisation is as nothing when he returns to find she has married a US airman… cue the sword and that oath…

 

Harlem Sketches (1935) directed by Leslie Bain was a slice of cinéma verité showing the black community of Harlem in New York City. The title cards talked of their “miserable existence” and there is much poverty in evidence as well as defiance and humour. The film was banned in some American states, including Ohio, whose censorship commission turned down the print: “Reason for Rejection: Showing Negroes of Harlem banded together in groups carrying banners displaying Communistic ideas. Advocates equal social rights for Negroes.”

 

That future the artists in Europe could see wasn’t coming anytime soon to certain communities, was it?

 

Mady makes her point.

Tailor-made woman… Souls for Sale (1923) with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope Silent Weekender Day 2

Would you like to sin. With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? 
Or would you prefer. To err. With her. On some other fur?

Rupert Hughes (as quoted by Mr K Brownlow, on the occasion of his 81^st birthday)

This was one of the first silent DVDs I bought partly because of its cameos of Hollywood stars but mainly because of a fascination with Eleanor Boardman who was later to star in The Crowd and to feature so elegantly in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series. Yes, there’s something about Eleanor and she’s also caught up in the William Haynes legend, with them both winning a contract through Goldwyn Pictures "New Faces of 1921" and maintaining a friendship through the years of their success and beyond: you got the feeling that they both rose above the daily Hollywood grind from the get go.

Souls for Sale is pretty light fare but it’s well made and does give a playful insight into the business of show people with Boardman’s character accidentally falling into the movies after escaping the clutches of her Bluebeard of a husband…

Charlie, Erich and Jean

The glimpses behind the scenes are, of course, 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 – no better treat for him than sharing in his passion – 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.

The film was based on a novel by a man named Rupert Hughes – Howard’s Uncle – who produced and adapted the screenplay and directed it. Mostly known as an historian and writer, Hughes couldn’t understand why a film company would buy an author’s work and then change so much. Here he made sure his work would see the screen as intended and the rigour of his research pays off in the detailed background to the film process.

Eleanor Boardman

Boardman was already famous as the Kodak Girl model and had already made three films but this was her first time as the main female star and so, just like her character she was in at the deep end. She’d tried to make a success on the stage in New York and made some head way but this, at 24, was her biggest break yet in the movies.

She doesn’t flunk it and, for me, gives a very relaxed and confident performance as Remember “Mem” Steddon (trips off the tongue doesn’t it…) who falls into film work as a refuge from her psychopathic husband (Lew Cody) and, against the wishes of her strictly-Christian parents – an echo of Boardman’s own folks’ disapproval. Boardman was perhaps a natural, very interesting to watch on camera and varied not only in her expression but her looks. She can handle comedy as well as drama and gives a taste of her dowdy desperation in The Crowd when watching her disastrous screen test: hands pulling her hair to a mess, tears running red down a face of real misery.

Less regal Garbo?!

She reminds me of a less regal Garbo, more down-to-earth and not quite the force or presence but still very watchable and adaptable, he relatively tall frame (over 5 feet 6… a giant in 1923!) making her both a graceful clothes horse as well as the equal of the men.

The film starts off with a shot of Mem in the back of a railway carriage with her husband Owen Scudder (Lew Cody), who is already starting to frighten her with his weird intensity – first example of Boardman’s ability to show unease. She’s desperate and jumps train at the first opportunity, landing in the middle of a desert.

Not a real sheik... Frank Mayo, Eleanor B and Richard Dix

She wanders for days and finally is saved by a Sheik on a camel… or rather handsome actor Tom Holby (Frank Mayo) who is on a location shoot for a film being made by director, Frank Claymore (Richard Dix). The crew rescue Mem with stars Leva Lamaire (Barbara La Marr… see what they did?) and Robina Teele (a feisty, Mae Busch) making sure the kid gets a break as well as medical attention. Snitz Edwards is also on hand as the lovelorn Komical Kale, who is unrequitedly in love with Leva who still mourns for her lost lover, Jim, who died as his plane was engulfed in flames.

Meanwhile Scudder with a history of marriage and murder behind him, manages to evade the cops at a railway station and then gets lucky and a little richer by taking advantage of Abigail Tweedy (Dale Fuller) who he convinces, cons and almost chokes before escaping. Of course, he’s not finished with Mem just yet…

After finding work in a hotel, the end of season forces Mem to try her hand in Hollywood and, we see her trying to sell her soul, to get into a picture, any picture… there’s a great casting session with even Eve Southern as Miss Velma Slade being told she’s only beautiful and there’s a pile of those in this town (the film was also intended to discourage people from the film business… ).

Billy Haines!

In addition to Chaplin and von Stroheim, Mem gets a tiny part in Fred Niblo’s The Famous Mrs. Fair and sees Marshall Neilan directing The Eternal Three with Raymond Griffith, Hobart Bosworth, and Claire Windsor. Star-spotting is half the fun although Kevin spoiled this by reading out the names of a table full at one point: including Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, William H. Crane, Elliott Dexter, June Mathis and ZaSu Pitts.

After a disastrous screen test with Frank Claymore and the crew, he realises that she’s made more for drama than comedy and gradually she starts to make her way with bigger and bigger parts. Eventually she gets her big chance in a circus film after Robina gets injured. By this stage Scudder is back on her trail and has decided that he’s in love with the now successful actor…

But, it’s a stormy night over the circus set and there’s not many places more dangerous than a film set based in a tent!

The ending is a tour de force as the storm hits and the flames rise higher – all tinted yellow in the Warner Archive/TCM restoration. One of the extras told Brownlow that the circus tent was soaked in paraffin for the fire… which Hughes didn’t let people know there were horses inside as he didn’t want them to clear a path for them; the result is chaotic but undeniably dangerous with a least one injury to a dancer.

As a defence of the film industry, that doesn’t show the health and safety standards in a good light but I guess the audience took it all as part of the drama.

Meg Morley accompanied in fine style matching the epic with the intimate in a film of many contrasting moods. There may have been a snatch of Liszt at one point but as ever Meg melds these themes into an overall improvisation that is unique to the moment and the setting.

Big productions!

The Old Swimmin’ Hole (1921) with Meg Morley

Talking of William Haines, the next film starred Charles Ray who bears more than a passing resemblance to the former. Based on a poem by James Whitcomb Riley, the film was essentially a series of backwoods episodes all told without intertitles. Directed by Joe De Grasse it was charming if a little ambient, but like all poetry, something you had to just relax and focus on. Meg Morley accompanied again and in a quite different manner; lots of light tones and energetically reiterated figures that played so well along with the “children” on screen.

I spotted Laura La Plante in Pickford curls as Charles’ love interest, so different from her close-cropped platinum bob of later years.

Another exceptional collection of films overall for the weekend and I was sorry to miss the final parts of the second day. All credit to the programmers, players, projectionists and volunteers who make the Bioscope happen and happen so very well!

Ha-Ha for Hollywood... Show People (1928), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image

Mordaunt Hall hit the nail on the head in his New York Times review: “So clever is the comedy in Show People… that it would not be at all surprising to hear that many in the audiences had sat through it twice.” Try five or seven times and it’s still a life-affirming hit.

This was the first time I’ve seen the movie in cinema though and with Cyrus Gabrysch’s playfully assured accompaniment and an audience of serious cinephiles getting every joke and spotting every starry face, it was as funny as ever.

I want to live in Billy and Marion’s world.

I always link this film with Souls for Sale (1923) starring King Vidor’s future wife, Eleanor Boardman and, in a cameo, the man himself, along with appearances from Mr Chaplin (filming Woman from Paris) and Erich von Stroheim (filming Greed, no less). It’s a film about making it in Hollywood and wraps the comedy around a more serious story although it’s also featured Boardman’s fellow New Face of 1921, William Haines as Pinkey, the assistant director; his first film credit!

The diminutive autograph hunter

In Show People we get Chaplin without his make up and someone who goes unrecognised by Marion Davis’ character Peggy Pepper, later Patricia Pepoire and we also get Eleanor Boardman, shown in the boat-under-the-willow-branches sequence from Bardleys the Magnificent along with John Gilbert, also directed, of course, by King Vidor.

Confused? You might be, but I recommend Souls for Sale to all who like the People of Show….

John Gilbert’s also *in* Show People walking into the studios ahead of Pepper and her father General Marmaduke Oldfish Pepper (Dell Henderson) who brings her to Hollywood with the determined, but totally wrong assumption that she’ll be welcomed with open arms. After trying and failing to follow Mr Gilbert into the studios, they are sent to casting and the first of many humiliations.

New in town

Peggy is lucky enough to encounter Billy Boone (William Haines) in a studio canteen and he offends her by failing to take anything seriously; he’s an old enough hand to know the twin imposters of triumph and failure walk closely together in the dream factory.

He gets Peggy a chance in one of his comedies and, playing it straight, she gives the perfect, un-anticipated, response when squirted in the face with soda water and getting involved in a custard pie fight. But Peggy goes from strength to strength and is soon selected ahead of Billy by the studio for more feature work. They change her name to Patricia Pepoire and make her date a fellow star, Andre Telefair (Paul Ralli) a phoney French “count” who we later discover, used to wait on tables and who acknowledges Billy with the most effete of nods… (nothing is accidental when Mr Haines is around eh, boys?).

What a trooper!?

Miss Pepoire becomes more and more removed from her friends and family and starts to believe her own publicity: Hollywood always on the defensive by this stage. Billy sees Peggy filming a dramatic encounter with Andre as his Keystone-style comedy crew are filming themselves in a madcap chase, but he just can’t reach her – even Andre is closer to getting the joke.

But even when audiences begin to turn, Ms Pepoire doesn’t get it. She agrees to marry Andre and all seems to be lost but can Billy find a way to not only see sense but to win her back? Honest laughter may be the solution along with soda water and cream pies…

Show People is a now well-worn story very well wrought and is enlivened by the constant rush of surprise guests, stars that are so in on the gag that they ham it up, especially the lunch time banquet in which Karl Dane, George K Arthur, Mae Murray, Renne Adore, Dorothy Sebastian, John Gilbert (again!), Claire Windsor, Leatrice Joy, Norma Talmadge (looking stunning by the way…), then Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart who get to send themselves up (Bill’s the funniest!).

Peggy transformed as Patricia Pepoire (any resemblance to Mae Murray etc...)

But I especially like Peggy’s response to seeing Marion Davies, asking who it is she’s told that it’s Marion Davies – “who? I don’t like her much” she mouths. King Vidor himself also pops up directing a sequence not unlike part of The Big Parade – looks like he knows what he’s doing alright!

Mordaunt Hall was even impressed with his handling of Mr Haines, a performer he seems unimpressed with: “Mr. Vidor, who more than once has proved himself a wizard in handling players, has accomplished here the seemingly impossible—by eliciting a restrained performance from William Haines. Mr. Haines, who has kicked over the traces in a number of films, in "Show People" actually compels sympathy for the character.”

Mr Haines

He concluded with even more compliments from his back handed delivery: “Miss Davies is beautiful in this film, but occasionally she does not hesitate for the sake of the part to show that with her hair pulled back she can look relatively plain…”

It’s fair to say that both Billy and Marion left their egos at the door for this film and, no doubt at Vidor’s prompting, just went for comedy broke!

The film was screened - free - as part of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image winter season of events, further details of upcoming shows are on their site.

Show People is now available on Warner Archives DVD but it’s the kind of film that works best, is funniest, when you are in among the crowd, laughing… just like Billy and Peggy!

Top: The actual Mae Murray, Johnny G and Norma T
Bottom: Bill gets the draw on Doug, Pepper is impressed!

The return of KB’s Shorts… Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney and Cyrus Gabrytsch

"It's easier to go straight with you..." says Billy. Don't count on it Leila honey...

My week of abbreviated wonders... It’s interesting that, after seeing a 132 minute cut of an approximately 600 minute film (Greed – see previous post), I find myself watching three Pathe 9.5 mm films that contain proportionately more of their source material. All came from the collection of Kevin Brownlow and from an age when this was almost all there was... no streaming in HD, Blu-ray of Betamaz.

Pathé invented this smaller stock for home consumption and as the Bioscope’s master of the magic lantern, Chief Projectionist Dave Locke, pointed out, the projection area is almost the same as 16mm and, with the right illumination it was perfectly possible to project them unaided onto the Cinema Museum’s screen. Mr Locke can make almost anything appear on that screen and these three examples included sumptuous close-ups, massed battle scenes and Billy Haines and his cheeky grin!

Billy and Leila in a publicity shot for Jimmy Valentine

The films were not always authorised hence Pathé’s issuing of a number of MGM titles, re-edited and cut to look like different films. Here was Jimmy le Mysteries (1928) that just happened to look a lot like Alias Jimmy Valentine directed by Jack Conway and staring the puck-ish Haines. Haines was one of the true silent greats, a natural on screen who could fool around whilst all the time being a flick-switch away from the drama.

He plays the eponymous Jimmy, an audacious safe cracker who, accompanied by his cartoonish side-kicks Karl Dane and Tully Marshall, sets about reducing the current accounts of banks across New York. He’s a dandy cracksman and it’s all a bit of fun until he meets Leila Hyams trying to stop her younger brother getting into a scrap.

Lional Berrymore tests Billy's alibi...

Jimmy likes this one so much that it doesn’t even matter that her dad runs the biggest bank in town, for this girl he’s willing to go straight, heck, for this gal, he’s willing to actually get a job and in her old man’s bank! Has Jimmy really turned over a new leaf and, even if he has, will the dogged Inspector (Lionel Barrymore) let him get away with it.

As with all three of tonight’s Pathé precis, this demi-Jimmy made perfect sense and was edited well enough to retain a sense of its original narrative and drama. John Sweeney accompanied in dynamic fashion, vamping along in cine-character as each of the four reels were replaced.

Next up, a tale the French company called, Money Does Not Bring Happiness (another link to Greed!) known better as The Younger Generation (1929) and directed by none other than Frank Capra. As with the first film this was intended to include sound but as Variety noted, this was not entirely successful: “… as bad as it can be!”

Luckily Pathé produced a silent and we had Cyrus Gabrysch’s excellent accompaniment instead adding effortless classical lines and under-pinning the emotions of this light-touch drama about a family rift.

Family miss-fortunes

The Goldfish family – a possible reference to big Sam Goldwyn’s original name – live in a tight-knit Jewish neighbourhood in a tenement block. Their eldest son Morris is a bit full of himself and beats up little sister Suzanne for giving his cake to her pal Eddie. A fight breaks out and Morris knocks an oil lamp over and, whilst his sis escapes across to Eddie's, he collects all of the valuables first. His mother (Rosa Rosanova) is impressed, he will be a big businessman one day, whilst his father (Jean Hersholt… yet another Greed connection…) is less sure, knowing that, basically, money can’t buy you love…

The years pass and Morris has become rich (and Ricardo Cortez), sis has turned into lovely Lina Basquette and she’s still seeing Eddie (Rex Lease) a piano player who big brother still considers far from suitable. The whole family live together on Morris’ immense pad with Capra frequently having his butler pulling down blinds that create the shadowy impressions of prison bars…

Ricardo Cortez faces off against Lina Basquette (TCM colorized...)

Talking of which, Eddie makes a mistake by agreeing a gig distracting the crowds singing on a float whilst some mobsters rob a jewellers. It doesn’t go well but Suzanne persuades her lover to do the time even though he was scarcely aware of the scheme. He gets sent down but the harshest punishment comes from Morris who exiles Suzanne as well saying that even her parents disown her.

Tragically this is not true… Time passes, more money is made and Father never smiles… is there any chance of love finding a way?

Simone Genevois takes to horse in la Merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1929)

Lastly an epic two reeler and believe me when I say you would scarce credit how many thousands of men and horses can be transposed onto 9.5mm! This was La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d’Arc (1929) directed by Marco de Gastyne more in the style of Gance than his Joan competitor Carl Dreyer (whose film he declared extraordinary).

Kevin Brownlow said that the studio had wanted the Dreyer film to have been an epic and it was... just not in the way they expected. The French film on the other hand was huge in scope taking seven months to film all across France with its director in search of authentic locations from Rouen to Orleans, Rheims Cathedral to the cellars of Mont St Michel. There was also a cast of thousands including at one point military extras who, having achieved their director’s objective, pushed on for greater glory only to be met with the fists of their opposition!

Simone Genevois

Simone Genevois makes for an heroic Jeanne and was exactly the right age to play the Saint being 16-17 during the shoot (she played Ivan Muzzhukhin’s young daughter in House of Mystery (1924) too!). We see her naming of the Dauphin in the cathedral and pivotal role in the defeats of the English.

Once caught, the comparisons with Dreyers trial are interesting, especially the faces of her accused. She found the filming exhausting, not just because she had to wear actual 22 kilo armour but also the emotional impact of the ending which she found hard to watch after completion.

Mr Brownlow said this 9.5 copy had helped spark the restoration of this film, and it would be one I’l like to see all the way through. Cyrus again accompanied and followed every sword thrust and parry, every heroic charge and the sadness of this remarkable young person’s final days.

Another evening of the unexpected for a packed, end of season, Bioscope. The next begins in September and it may well begin with The Goose Woman featuring one of the very best performances of the era from Louise Dresser.

And yet another good season for the Kennington Bioscope! Thanks to all those who organise, project and otherwise enable this precious cinematic resource. The Cinema Museum is also to be congratulated and deserves whatever support every genuine cinephile can give it. One of the best venues in London and surely one of the very best silent film clubs anywhere!