Revolutionary... Battleship Potemkin (1925)

OK, so this is one of those films you probably don’t need anyone else writing about - many hands click the return and continue on with Google - but it’s new to me at least. I’ve never consciously watched Battleship Potemkin all the way through (yes, I know…) but I’ve been aware of it as one of the great films since reading about a list of the best films in my parents’ copy of Purnell's New English Encyclopaedia – we didn’t have the internet in the seventies.  So, Sergei, no pressure then….

Battleship Potemkin impresses immediately as one of the most controlled of films with a precise rhythm that still carries force and which still catches the viewer off guard: this film makes you tense and the sequence on the Odessa Steps is, of course, still horrific – never more so than after recent events in Paris. Why are we so brutal?

The build up to the Russian Revolution in 1917 was a long one with anti-Tsarist political movements dating back well into the nineteenth century – see the Narodniks and their To the People Movement of the 1860-70s - as problems escalated across society and the economy. Karl Marx may have expected the mature industrial economies of Germany or Britain to provide the first communist states but Russia was a more desperate society with a higher proportion of people with nothing to lose…

She also lacked the great national projects of imperial expansion and commercial innovation that drove the other super powers…Rightly or wrongly she lacked this kind of success. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the disastrous war with Japan in 1904-5 which gave rise to much discontent at home and which contributed to the mutiny on the Potemkin which formed the basis of the film and which, twenty years later, was to be celebrated as an important precursor to the Revolution’s eventual victory.

Battleship Potemkin presents as one of the most  beguiling propaganda films in history with one sumptuous image following another as Sergei Eisenstein infuses his narrative with irresitable emotional and moral force. Joseph Goebbels later admiringly declared that no one with any pre-existing political leaning could watch it without wanting to become a Bolshevik (incidentally only newly formed after a split with the minority – Menshevik – element of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 although the sides didn’t dissolve that party until 1912…).

One of its successes may be that it doesn’t necessarily paint the naval commanders and the Cossacks as pantomime villains: they’re bad and brutal enough but believably so:only following the orders of a failing regime. But what really works is Eisenstein’s portrayal of the ordinary individuals caught up in these events`- people who had no option but to make a stance against intolerable conditions and a regime blind to the suffering of its own people.

The men of the Potemkin live in something akin to institutionalized poverty, cramped together in hanging bunks, exhausted from the war and fed maggot-ridden rations. The men are bullied and then told to swallow the meat they’re offered with the ship’s doctor declaring the meat fit for consumption. Tempers fray and the Captain calls his company to a meeting during which a line is drawn and he orders his troops to execute the ring-leaders. In a tense face-off, communicated through the rapid cuts and escalating tension that is Eisenstein’s trademark, the marines cannot fire on their comrades… the mutiny begins.

From order to chaos

The men run riot and soon gain the upper hand by throwing the officers over board. Soon the red flag flies over the ship but not long after their leader Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov) is gunned down, shot from behind by one of the cruellest of the officers, Commander Golikov (Vladimir Barsky). His body hangs grotesquely from the rigging before falling limp into the murky waters: the revolt has its first martyr.

Vakulinchuk falls

Free of naval authority, the crew, now led by Chief Officer Giliarovsky (Grigori Aleksandrov), take the Potemkin to Odessa. They are welcomed  by the majority of the town who come to pay their respects to Vakulinchuk as he lies almost in state. There are strange lingering shots of the body holding a candle and the masses staring in awe at the dead man – every new system needs to celebrate the fallen.

Thousands of extras swarm towards the docks

The people grow in number and all snake their way down streets, along causeways, over bridges and down steps… There’s a joyous mood as they celebrate the start of their move to freedom but as one woman throws her head back in close up and another moves forward to obscure the camera-view with a parasol, there’s a sudden – startling –shift in mood: these people aren’t celebrating they’re running and in total fear as armed militia men stride down the top of the Odessa Steps bayonets drawn and guns pointed directly at the innocents.

The sequence is stunning, visceral and unflinchingly horrific as the rifles start to fire and no one, not women, children or babies is spared. The camera tracks alongside the steps following the soldiers’ relentless, murderous march placing the viewer in the centre of the tragedy hoping for the survival of each individual highlighted in the slaughter. The soldiers force the people down the steps and towards the welcoming blades of mounted Cossacks… there is no mercy.

In reality there was no massacre on the steps but there were plenty more elsewhere. Eisenstein’s film does not mislead, this is what happens when civil war erupts and change was increasingly inevitable once the social contract was ripped apart over the ensuing months of the revolution.

The Tsar regained control but Russian society was changed for ever after the 1905 Revolution and the lessons of solidarity in the face of state oppression were not forgotten. Here in the discipline of the country’s military were the hearts set and the minds open to the truth of the old regime. The film closes with a segment as poignant as the steps as the battleship heads to face the Russian fleet: will they be blown from the waters or will they find merciful solidarity? Whatever happens next is based on actual events…

There have been many versions of Potemkin over the years and I watched the BFI version which is as close to the original as you can get - I think? It's available direct - on sale! - or from Movie Mail.

Every home should have one... but then you probably already do.

Magical mystery tour... The Blue Bird (1918)

"The silent stage is a thing as much apart from the so-called 'legitimate' stage as ice skating is from roller skating." Maurice Tourneur, 1915

It's interesting to read Tourneur's views on silent film as he talked of the need for the development  of "a new sort of creative literary brain" for filmdom" an "author" who would work within the medium and not bring ideas from without: someone who could use the particular strengths of film to create disciplined art.

Such thinking aligns with that of Maurice Maeterlinck's view of acting: "the stage is a place where works of art are extinguished. ...Poems die when living people get into them." The Belgian writer enjoyed great success in the theatre but he obviously felt that the input of performers took his work off in unpredictable directions and even considered that puppets might be preferable...

What then did Monsieur Maeterlinck make of the other Maurice's production of his play The Blue Bird? Few directors of the silent period exerted such control over their work as Tourneur and as he changed the "skates" used by the Blue Bird did he move its symbolism closer to its author's original vision?

The film was released just over a year after the director's collaboration with Mary Pickford in The Poor Little Rich Girl and featured such regular collaborators as art director Ben Carré, cinematographer John van den Broke and Editor Clarence Brown. If that film was Revolver this was the full Sgt. Pepper - a flight of fantasy from start to finish: silent psychedelia in full bloom at a time when the World needed to believe in eternal truths and the truth of eternity.

Bread, faithful Dog, Water, Sugar, a Fairy, Milk, selfish Cat and Fire...

There are no puppets as such but plenty of tightly-defined fantasy constructs - humanised versions of fire, water and light, dogs, cats and wonderful "moods" such as vibrant dancers embodying The Joys of Pure Thoughts and the slightly less impressive Sleeping-More-Than-Necessary (young people in my house take note!). Tourneur also draws pure and naturalistic performances from his cast of children, 12-year old Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl who react and act with genuine thrill to every new wonder.

Robin Macdougall and Tula Belle

The film is a sumptuous collection of visual set pieces, a hyper-creative comfort blanket that smuggles through the simple message that there's not only no place like home but that kindness must spread out from there into the heart-broken World beyond.

There seem to be few hard edges but when in the heart of their fantastic journey the two youngsters meet not only their dead grandparents but their dead brothers and sisters, there are at least ten of them... this was a time when infant mortality was high and life came with the flimsiest of "guarantees".

The Fabric of Moonbeams...

Mytyl and Tyltyl are peasant children who live in relative comfort with their parents Daddy Tyl (Edwin E. Reed) and Mummy Tyl (Emma Lowry). Their neighbours range from a rich children inhabiting a large mansion to the impoverished Widow Berlingot (a dragged-up Edward Elkas) who lives with her seriously-ill daughter (Katherine Bianchi).

Watching the party at the rich children's house

 The widow asks the children if she can borrow their pet bird to cheer her daughter up but they refuse and think nothing of it. They are not particularly selfish children but do present as complacent as they tease their mother over her attempts to get them to respect the memory of their grandmother, or to take care with their daily bread, milk and water.

Lillian Cook and Tom Corless

That night the children are woken by the appearance of their neighbour who then reveals herself to be Fairy Bérylune (Lillian Cook). The fairy gives Tyltyl a hat which enables him to see the truth of things as they really are and soon their room is filled with everyday objects come to life: Light ( Fire (S.E. Potapovitch), Water (Mary Kennedy), Sugar (Charles Craig), Milk (Eleanor Masters) and Bread (Sammy Blum). Even their faithful dog (Charles Ascot) and slightly evil Cat (Tom Corless) spring to half-human existence.

The Fairy says they must head off on a journey through mystical lands to find the Bluebird of Happiness, none of the animates will be able to return but they all agree to help the children. Off they fly, heading up to encounter all manner of wonders, with the imaginations of Tourneur and his crew barely limited by the restrictions of contemporary technology.

In Night's castle...

What follows features some of stunning set-piece visuals - as you would expect given the director's painterly background - it's pretty much un-relentingly lovely with the odd lapse into saccharine overdrive. Whether it was influenced by the earlier works of Lewis Carroll and Frank Baum it certainly had its own impact on their subsequent cinematic adaptations.
   

Free spirits

I watched the Kino DVD which comes with a wistful score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. It's available direct from Kino Lorber or from Amazon in the UK.

Did Tourneur succeed? The reviewer from the New York Times was in no doubt:

"M. Maeterlinck's poem has been transferred from a book to the screen, and it is a safe assertion to say that seldom, if ever, has the atmosphere and spirit of a written work been more faithfully reproduced in motion pictures."

Trainspotting… The Wrecker (1929)

My Uncle Duncan was a classical musician who played for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and in his spare time he used to make working replicas of locomotives, reducing down his hand-crafted components from the original blueprints in the best equipped back-garden shed in South Liverpool. On a trip to ride behind one of these contraptions I was amazed at the amount of power generated by the steam engine.

When even a scaled down loco lets off steam the result is highly kinetic…  multiply that by a factor of twenty and I can imagine the impact of a real locomotive and can understand why the producers of The Wrecker wanted to crash an actual engine rather than use a model: they wanted to show the full force and to scare an audience of regular passengers with the vision of a spectacular disaster.

An unnaturally-quiet Waterloo...

Southern Railways collaborated fully with the film-makers and whilst they wanted to show the grace and power of their service they also wanted to show its superiority to their rivals on the road. Ignore the fact that their trains were being bounced off their lines by a lone madman but just appreciate the benefits of the “Flying Welshman”: much faster than a road coach and providing a far smoother  journey… That is, unless it met with a large object deliberately left on the rails.

There was in fact only one staged crash in the film but it was used to represent three attacks. Twenty two cameras were positioned around the crash site and a truck laden down with concrete was set in the train’s path along with sufficient measures to ensure the train headed off the rails and didn’t just carry on – a runaway train with no Denzil Washington to stop it…

The effort was more than worth it, especially in the second viewing of the crash and after the coaches were set on fire and the actors were able to scramble over the safer sections. The scene was shot on a Saturday and, amazingly, the line was re-open for business by Monday (match that Network Rail!).

The film was an Anglo-German production, directed by an experienced Hungarian Géza von Bolváry. It was based on the successful play by Arnold Ridley (yes, writer of The Ghost Train and much later the man who was Private Godfrey) and Bernard Merivale but – from its timing – appears to be a truncated version oftheir story. The narrative would suggest as much as the plot is stripped down to the bare essentials – did they assume the audience knew the story that well?  Surely not in Germany?

Joseph Striker, Benita Hume and Winter Hall

The end result lacks a bit of logical exposition and believability especially in the lengths the Wrecker is prepared to go in order to ensure the supremacy of road transport but it's still a thrilling ride.

The railway shots are splendid, not just of the crash but of the day-to-day routine of track, station and locomotion. There are some superb shots achieved through placing a camera on a platform to the side of one locomotive – brave camera work! – and then again when the camera moves seamlessly from an exterior  shot of moving train carriages to the inside of the carriage – never seen that before!

A stunning shot: the camera pans from outside the train to the party in the carriage...

On the people side, Carlyle Blackwell throws pantomime shapes as the barely disguised villain of the piece, Ambrose Barney – a man who works for the railway but has set up the Kyle Coach Company to take their business… with a little murderous help. Head of the railway Sir Gerald Bartlett (Winter Hall) takes an age to spot the viper in his nest and then is rather swifty bumped off by a sniper’s rifleshot.

Carlyle Blackwell - boo!

Joseph Striker plays “Lucky” Roger Doyle who does indeed appear to be the beneficiary of considerable good fortune especially in so quickly gaining the affection of Sir Gerald’s secretary Mary (Benita Hume – who acts most of the rest off the screen as the plucky amateur sleuth).

There’s also a good turn from Pauline Johnson as triple agent Beryl Matchley without whom the Wrecker might never get caught in spite of massively compelling circumstantial evidence!

Joseph Striker - hurrah!

The tone is slightly conflicted:  35 passengers get killed in one crash and yet the film insists on trying to lighten the mood through the hapless antics of useless private detective Rameses Ratchett (Leonard Thompson) who has a running battle with with Hitchcock favourite, Gordon Harker, as one of the rail company’s men. Whilst this is very British it makes for odd viewing – people are dying and we don’t really care if Rameses’s car won’t start or whether it can manage to travel a key five miles without incident.

Harker and Thompson - ha!

Reservations aside, the drama is multi-tracked as events ramp up to the finish with the race on to prevent the worst outrage of all and then chase down the Wrecker before he kills himself and many more…

Benita Hulme - cor!

I watched the restored version which comes with a new musical score from Neil Brand who combines synthesisers and pianos to great effect: sound-tracking so many classic locos must have been a dream come true – their very movement an invitation to sound. There’s also a re-created spoken section as an incriminating phonograph cylinder is played back. The Wrecker was shot as both sound and silent from that period when picture houses didn’t always have the modern kit.

The DVD is available from Strike Force Entertainment who normally specialise in travel heritage programmes and which explains the main market for this film. But, whether you just like steam trains or cutting-edge late silent cinematography, the film is very rewarding.

You can buy the DVD from Cherry Red Records -SFE's distribution partners - and it comes with a nifty set of extras including an abridged home movie version as well as a fascinating featurette in which Mr Brand discusses the score. Our Duncan would have loved it!

A SECR F1 Class locomotive No. A148 (I think?)

All in a flap… Bare Knees (1928)

“It isn’t what you wear on your body; it’s what you wear in your head.”

My Great Aunt Lillian is 101 and was born just three years after Virginia Lee Corbin, the star of this film. I don’t think Lil was a rebellious teen but browsing through old family albums trying to play spot the flapper we have a few more likely suspects all given away by their hair, a twinkle in their eyes and the very real possibility that they once revealed their knees at Liverpool’s Grafton Ballroom.

Bare Knees is an archetypal “flapper movie” and plays to its audience like a late fifties teen movie or an eighties coming of age story that show the generations ultimately working together in the face of seemingly extreme shifts in fashion and mind-set… at first the adults don’t get it but in the end they re-discover their own youthful outlook and both sides recognise the others contribution… “you know kid… you’re alright!”. 

Forrest Stanley, Jane Winton and Virginia Lee Corbin

“If all women were like Jane, husbands wouldn’t have to worry…”

With a scintillating script by Harold Shumate based on a book by Adele Buffington, the film has some cracking intertitles all “delivered” in style by VLC, an actress I had heard little about but who had been in the flickers since childhood. Graduating to more grown-up fare here she is Billie, the teenage sister of Jane Longworth (another “Big Sis” role for the elegant Jane Winton – see The Patsy…) .

Jane lives in married malaise taken for granted every day by her careerist husband John (Forrest Stanley) who is a district attorney:  who clearly knows the law far better than his wife. John returns home on her birthday to find her with their best friend Paul Gladden (Johnnie Walker) and talks as if only he understands how to make a marriage work…

Virginia Lee Corbin

“Well, I could roll over and butter myself with sorrow! Is this a party… or a wake?”

But a storm is coming to disrupt this cosy complacency in the form of an unexpected arrival from Billie… The Longworth’s are just in the middle of a rather staid party when she makes her appearance as the door opens to reveal her feet first and then an alarming absence of skirt all the way up to and way beyond her knees!

Billie's hemline stuns the room into silence...

Director Erle C. Kenton makes the absolute most of this showing the entire room going into shock with open-mouthed astonishment all round…  It’s funny and works in the context but really the hepcats of Berlin and Paris would have been unimpressed. Still, everything in context!

Billie explodes into the room and catches the eye of both Paul and a young lawyer Larry Cook (Donald Keith) with whom she proceeds to sharply cut the rug.

Virginia Lee Corbin and Donald Keith

“Excuse yourself, Big Boy, while me and the girls split infinitives…”

 Billie finds a group of young women down in the mouth – they’re a baseball team and just they’ve lost their best player prior to a contest with the boys. All looks hopeless but Billie has an idea…

The girls run out with short-shorts and distract the boys into a 29 to zero defeat… if only the Boston Red Sox had had this idea they maybe wouldn’t have had to wait those 86 years between World Series…

Back page headlines

“Young lady, your bare knees and bare back are going to get you into trouble.”

Billie’s big splash doesn’t play well with sensible Jane though and the girls have it out back home. Jane can’t see that her sibling’s display is more about individuality than sexuality and neither can the men.
All that is, save for Larry who pops the question on a moonlit car drive. But Billie isn’t ready.

Will Larry strike out?

The youngsters have been frequenting the Ship Ahoy Café on the Pom Pom Pleasure Pier; it’s a lively place where “…the management is not responsible for the loss of hats, coats or reputations.”  John is looking to close the place down and sends Larry to investigate the bawdy venue with its dancing pirate girls and private rooms.

“Men find it difficult enough to be moral, even when women dress decently!”

Little does he know that his sister-in-law is not the only person to be frequenting the Café… things come to a head as truths are revealed, Billie shows her character and all hell breaks loose at the Pier.

Pom Pom pandemonium

Bare Knees is more fun in the first half when Billie’s attitude has the town’s high society on the run but it makes its point with the dramatics of the closing segment.

The performances are very good especially Jane Winton who plays the sensible sister weighed down by marital indifference with depth and subtlety.  Maude Fulton is also great value as Bessie, the Longworth’s comically-disheveled maid who makes a journey of her own inspired by Billie’s sartorial liberationalism.

Jane Winton

Virginia Lee Corbin’s energy naturally dominates and she makes for a thoroughly-modern flapper who has taken charge of her own choices and doesn’t need a man to define her. It’s a real shame there are so few of her films surviving. She married and started a family in the thirties but tragically died from TB at only 32… There’s more about her here on the Silents are Golden website in a biography from Tim Lussier.

I watched the Grapevine DVD which uses a reasonable print – it’s available direct or from Amazon. I wonder if Lil and my other great aunties ever saw it?